Tag: friends

Birthday Wishes

I turned 31.  x writes me:

officially in your thirties

because i think you’re 31, yes?

1. your pants start to fall off of your ass and so you spend more of your time than you ever thought possible with this singular task: pulling up your pants.
2. it seems you’ve been privy to eyes that don’t need glasses, but i suspect this curse of seeing will haunt you at some point, too. i predict your thirties for this one.
3. more time for collaborations gone wrong like the email you just sent me from that weird powder-paint-guy. (what was his context anyway?)
4. when good things happen they are REALLY GOOD but
5. when bad things happen they are horrible. oh, but you’ve been living with this for almost a year now. sigh.
6. you think about time in chunks of years instead of chunks of days.
7. your hands start to look old and veiny (have you noticed this yet?)
8. you realize even more than you did in your twenties the importance of your friends and family.

this is my way of saying happy birthday to you.
because, dammit, i’ll always be a few years older.
x

accepting that i was ‘the crazy homeless street kid’

Send to a friend from grad school after i no-showed b/c of a pins and needles attack on the streets of SF

Sorry I never made it to meet you yesterday, but it was not for lack of effort or desire.  I had a meeting that ran a little bit late in Berkeley.  I hopped on the BART, and caught all the trains and all the transfers, i called to let you know i might be late, but got caught off when the train went back underground.  That was probably a surreal voicemail to arrive to today.

I got out at 8th st, and immediately caught a bus going in the right direction.  I even asked the driver to confirm that it went straight down 8th st.  but then after 8 or so stops, it turned right, and i got confused, and got off the bus.  I was lost and confused.  I was meeting O and her cousin, and managed to give them my address 11th and Rhode Island, but had no idea when they would be coming.

I can’t remember if I told you about this when we saw each other briefly at Berkeley, and if so, forgive the redundancy.  I have been in treatment for cancer (Melanoma Stage III) for 9 months.  Surgeries aside, I’m 4 months into a 12 month drug regimen. The drug (Inteferon) makes my body feel terrible in all kinds of ways, but the worst side effect is that I have heat related panic attacks where I get painful pins and needles all over my body. I kind of go fetal in a paroxyism of pain, scratching, and heat.

So I’m having this building panic attack as I’m rolling down 8th st on the bus, scratching at every skin surface, pressing my ice pack against my chest (I keep an ice pack with me). The woman next to me moved to the other side of the bus. There is nothing quite so degrading as having someone get up from the seat next to you, and move across the aisle to another seat away from you b/c they think you might be contagious, or crazy, or violent.

When I got off the bus I was in full blown pins and needles mode. I dropped my bag and a heavy box of flyers for the book, and took my shirt off and tried to calm myself down. the icepack i keep with me had lost its cool an hour earlier. meditating in half lotus didn’t work, so i tried lying down on the concrete, which is cold. and then this security guard kept circling on his bicycle.  after five or so minutes he came up and told me i couldn’t lie down.  I read him the riot act about how I had cancer and that I had heat related symptoms, and i needed to get cold by lying on the concrete.  He didn’t give a shit.  He brought someone over, and they started talking and pointing at me.  I panicked and ran around the corner.  Then I panicked even more because I wasn’t in a place where O could find me, I didn’t know what her cousin’s car looked like, and she wasn’t picking up her cell phone.

I’m in hysterical tears, huddling shirtless with a box and a shopping bag with my stuff.  Scratching at my body.  Freaking out.  And this more formal security guard walks around the corner, and approaches me.  He asked me if I was okay, and between tears i said no.  I told him what had happened, and how I needed to get back to that corner, but was scared of his associate.  I told him about the cancer.

I was beginning to realize something weird was happening w/ the logic of cancer, illness, homelessness, and schizophrenia.  I could tell he was kind of not believing me, and I pulled out my business card to give it to him to prove I was a “real person” or something.  He held it, but didn’t look, and said something like “it’s cool man, i know you, i’ve seen you around.” and then i got instantly clearheaded and went off on him.  I gave him a whole miniature lecture on why he had never seen me, how i was a professor in NYC, that I was here on business, and just gave a lecture at berkeley.  And he was just nodding.  And I realized there was *no way* i could convince him I wasn’t a homeless schizophrenic.  Which is the condition (or anti-condition) of the schizophrenic, right?

He was good, though.  used to dealing with the crazies.  and for that moment, i accepted that i was ‘the crazy homeless street kid.’  he said that i should go back to that other corner and wait for my “friend” to pick me up.  he told me i should just sit on the other side of the street, as the tenants he represented got paranoid about “stuff.”  and he reached out and shook my hand: “we’re cool, right?”

I went back to the corner, and shuffled over to the bus stop on the opposite corner. they can’t kick me out of a public bus stop, right?  Finally, O showed up, and my attack was over.

As you said in your message (which i didn’t get until after it all was over) it is tricky to get there.  I guess 8th ends, then starts again, and that the southern part is quite confusing, and hard to get to.  So this is a long, round about way of saying that I really wished I could have met up, and seen your space, etc.  but sometimes life gets in the way.  This has been a year of life getting in the way of life.

m

Neitzche and Beckett

A couple of months ago, AW sent me an email that I meant to respond to.  She basically asked me what was keeping me going:

d)Your grace through this whole thing amazes me, I think I would of just went into a ball and would have completely stopped functioning entirely
e) Someone told me this when I was 19 and the doctors told me I was going to die and for some reason I think of it now a lot when things are tough, even though I’m not religious I find it comforting “God only gives you want you can handle”

I finally finished my response to her:

I guess that there are two things that keep me going: Neitzche and Beckett.  (LOL)

I was probably in 10th or 11th  grade when I first heard a bastardized version of Neitzche’s quote “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”  It is totally fraught, but really something i have lived by.  i have really pushed myself in my life.  really to the edge mentally and physically.

one semester in college i worked so hard (and was so strung out on caffeine) i collapsed and spent a week in the hospital.  fever was 104. but after i got better i think i was stronger for it.  though, i always worried there might have been some brain damage.  i never was able to pull all-nighters again.

In Waiting for Godot Estragon says “I can’t go on like this” and Vladimir says “That’s what you think.”  Sometimes it is translated “That’s what you say.”   But actually the French is “On dit ca”  or “One says that.”  Which I think is a subtle difference.  But really, what else am I going to do?  I’m waiting.  But i’m not just sitting around waiting.  I’m actively waiting.  For what, who knows.  Godot?  The White Light? The Singularity?  The End of Oil?  Whatevs.  I’m just trying to keep myself entertained while I wait.

My brother is on a plane to San Dieigo

And I am now here by myself.

Before I went to sleep, we raised a toast with the leftover champagne from his Sunday party.  I had less than half a glass, but on top of the other drugs I am on, I was nearly immediately woozy.  I slept harder than I have in months.  I woke up in the middle of the night to turn off the fans, and walked into more than one wall or piece of furniture.  Very deep, heavily drugged sleep.

Today is the first transitional day to Fall.  Its not Fall yet, but it isn’t Summer anymore.  Last night I didn’t have to run the AC, and I even turned off the fans in the middle of the night and put on the duvet.

So this morning it is twice as quiet.  No S, no whirring air.

I woke up from a dream in which I was crying.  I was crying in the dream. I don’t think I was crying physically, though I woke up with all the emotions of crying.  The dream was an extended “I forgot to wear my clothes” dream.  As a teacher, these dreams happen to me.  Once I actually forgot my clothes, but that is a whole other story.  Usually I am not worried about being naked — I worry about the other people made uncomfortable by my nakedness. but this time I was worried, even though I did have underwear.

In the dream I got into an argument with my father about underwear — this make no sense, b/c it was a dream, but I think I was borrowing someone’s iPhone to watch a youtube video about underwear, and my father got angry because I he had ironed my underwear, and that was not enough, i had to go look at underwear too!  This, of course, makes no sense because my father doesn’t ever do my laundry, and i have never in my life had ironed underwear.  That might be fun.

Somehow we were all outside, surrounding a school bus.  I was in the bus.  Everyone was outside.  I cursed angrily and threw my housekeys at the front window, which made a small chip or crack in the window, and walked out of the bus.  The outside turned into the tightest bend in the street that I grew up on, and I started walking through tall grass in the direction of my parents house.  Crying.  I was in front, but I could feel the presence of my brother walking with me, to my left and a pace behind me.  Some other people, who might have been friends or might have been relatives broke off from the group and started walking behind me.  I was still crying in the dream.  Then I woke up.

I have a habit of having the most obvious dreams.  Really unsubtle…

On top of all this, I think I’m getting sick again

The good news is that I have started meditating again.  I’m going to a class w/ O.  Its Yoga, not the kind I did before.  But close enough.