Big day yesterday (staples out, meaning trip to the city.)
Pockets of close to normalcy. Not pushing it (honest Suzanne).
Still fascinated by the whole experience/adventure.
Yesterday, able to pay attention to two things at the same time briefly. In hospital was able to surrender to the cacophony of sound without straining to distinguish separate elements.
Noticed in car ride to city, visually things appear almost as in 3D, no smoothing of the whole but rather distinct elements standing out from each other. Sounds too. 'nuff for now.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
SUNDAY POET BRAIN SURGERY
Thought I'd leave that "poet" mistype in!
Tired night so not as much of an improvement as the past few days trying to type. But still what a long way to have come already. (Typing with my left finger is faster). Also was able to read a paragraph out of a TIME to myself for the first time silently (I got back being able to read out loud a few days ago).
Unfortunately (phew, that was a chore to get right), the article was about Sarah Palin. How did it ever come to this. Oh well, out of my control.
(PS: I feel almost guilty for all the concern and worry I've caused family and friends. A kind of survivor's guilt thing, which is interesting. But mostly the calm of not being able to control events beyond the moment. The ultimate spiritual surrender.)
Tired night so not as much of an improvement as the past few days trying to type. But still what a long way to have come already. (Typing with my left finger is faster). Also was able to read a paragraph out of a TIME to myself for the first time silently (I got back being able to read out loud a few days ago).
Unfortunately (phew, that was a chore to get right), the article was about Sarah Palin. How did it ever come to this. Oh well, out of my control.
(PS: I feel almost guilty for all the concern and worry I've caused family and friends. A kind of survivor's guilt thing, which is interesting. But mostly the calm of not being able to control events beyond the moment. The ultimate spiritual surrender.)
Saturday, November 21, 2009
BRAIN SURGERY—1 WEEK LATER
Obviously better typing skills. Still slow and tiring (taking forever), but so improved.
I can't wait to be able to relate some of this in detail, especially the first days, like being able to talk but incapable of passing on a message over the phone. Or unable to multiply a simple number. Or read a series of simple words.
Worn out, but grateful so much is slowly coming back.
I can't wait to be able to relate some of this in detail, especially the first days, like being able to talk but incapable of passing on a message over the phone. Or unable to multiply a simple number. Or read a series of simple words.
Worn out, but grateful so much is slowly coming back.
Friday, November 20, 2009
POST OP 3
Got good advice just now from my old, dear friend Suzanne, whose daughter had brain surgery, to not push the mental activity yet, let the brain recovery from actually being touched my someone, literally. Amazing.
(And again thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers and love, most of all and always for the love.)
(And again thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers and love, most of all and always for the love.)
Thursday, November 19, 2009
POST OP 2
an interesting thing is happening. if i write in all lower case it doesn't take me anywhere near as long to type a simple message as it was just yesterday, though i still have to back up an correct alot.
but as a young writer, working on the portable typewriter the police chiefs wife gave me for graduating high school i always wrote in lower case and skipped the contractions as well (you they're automatic) [i meant to write now they're automatic not you but thought i'd leave that mistake in because it's interestingly not about mistyping, which i've been backing up correcting constantly as i go.
phew. this is difficult. much easier if i just use my left hand, well finger actually, (though even leftie, it took me eight attempts to figure out how to write "acutally") [woops] since i taught myself how to those many years ago and ever since to type two-fingered.
Not to worry though. i'm progressing and these are just motor skills that will bounce back.
{P.S. post: I am writing this for my dad to say that he can speak normally and can read The New Yorker out loud but interestingly, is having great difficulty reading it to himself. Typing is the hardest. He finds all of this fascinating!}
but as a young writer, working on the portable typewriter the police chiefs wife gave me for graduating high school i always wrote in lower case and skipped the contractions as well (you they're automatic) [i meant to write now they're automatic not you but thought i'd leave that mistake in because it's interestingly not about mistyping, which i've been backing up correcting constantly as i go.
phew. this is difficult. much easier if i just use my left hand, well finger actually, (though even leftie, it took me eight attempts to figure out how to write "acutally") [woops] since i taught myself how to those many years ago and ever since to type two-fingered.
Not to worry though. i'm progressing and these are just motor skills that will bounce back.
{P.S. post: I am writing this for my dad to say that he can speak normally and can read The New Yorker out loud but interestingly, is having great difficulty reading it to himself. Typing is the hardest. He finds all of this fascinating!}
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
POST OP 1
The good but slow news is no cancer! I'm home! More soon. (It took me several attempts just to write this.)
Thursday, November 12, 2009
THE NIGHT BEFORE BRAIN SURGERY POST
After I dropped my twelve-year-old off at his mother's (he wants to be there tomorrow so he's taking off school and his mom and him are heading over before I go into the operating room), I went to the gym and did a workout to get myself tired enough to go to sleep early.
Afterwards I picked up a few things at Whole Foods, including some mashed potatoes and yams and cranberries, nice and warm to eat with some leftover chicken a friend made for me and my boy a couple of nights ago. While I ate I listened to the messages on my phone from friends all over the country wishing me the best, and vaguely tuned in to the TCM movie on the TV, a black-and-white '40s flick with Bette Davis flailing her cigarette around a little less than usual, a more or less restrained performance for her in a movie I'd never seen before (one of my favorite things TCM and '40s black-and-white movies, which I know I've said before, recently).
I called as many people back as I could, spent some time on the phone with my older boy and my dearest friend (I talked to my daughter earlier, she's been kind enough to change her schedule around to be the one to take care of my in my first week of recovery) and now I'm writing this to say poetry saved me again, as well as black-and-white movies and the love of my children and family and dear friends. The day I got home from the hospital after a long stay (longer than usual) after they took my prostate out and the cancer in it with it, my friend Harry Northup's book REUNIONS arrived in the mail and when I felt up to it I started to read it and it brought me so much joy it instantly renewed my love of books, my love of poetry in particular, and my love of the honest creative expressions of others that seem so vital when we're going through tough times.
Today in the mail I received a little book of poems and artwork, all by my friend Geoff Young, and all so full of life and intelligence and experience and unique ways of using language to get at the important stuff while seeming to be making light of it all. Just what the doctor ordered. A little book called NOT TWICE ENOUGH he printed at Kwik Print in Great Barrington in a run of just 100 copies. It's beautiful in every way—the art, the poems, and the spirit behind and moving through it all.
I'll have to do a post on it when I get back from the hospital, but here's a taste:
"WHEN YOU GET THAT
Love how your bow's nothing but a blur
when you get that geothermal thing going
on Paganini's "24 Caprices"
and the way you toss your hair
like Midori at a bus shelter
closing a cell-phone with her chin.
I'm all ears when you ask me to trim
your short hairs; intimacy is a pair
of scissors. The art world may have swept
the painter of the moment off her feet
for painting "Fred As A Bee-Hive"
but we're closing in on the spot
where words fall silent and breath's so warm
we're laughing inside to feel this alive."
I've been reading a poem in it every now and then since it arrived in the mail around noon and made me smile when I read the first poem. I'm a happy man. I had some quickly passing worries that I hadn't written that book to my little guy where I wanted to tell him everything I've learned, or the one about my good friend Hubert Selby and all we shared, or my Hollywood adventures, or....
But then I was reminded by my friend Terence of all I've already done, and that I'll have plenty of time to do all I'm still planning to. Finally I said goodnight to my younger son and his mom and now it's time to slip between the sheets and go to sleep—one of my favorite things, getting into bed at night and feeling the comfort of clean sheets and the weight of the cover and quilt etc. Once a young woman I was seeing in L.A. remarked, when I expressed how happy it made me to get into a nice warm clean bed at night (especially since I'd spent time sleeping in lots of not so clean or warm or happy places in my life), she said "That's why you're not more successful, you're too easily satisfied!").
Thank God for that.
Afterwards I picked up a few things at Whole Foods, including some mashed potatoes and yams and cranberries, nice and warm to eat with some leftover chicken a friend made for me and my boy a couple of nights ago. While I ate I listened to the messages on my phone from friends all over the country wishing me the best, and vaguely tuned in to the TCM movie on the TV, a black-and-white '40s flick with Bette Davis flailing her cigarette around a little less than usual, a more or less restrained performance for her in a movie I'd never seen before (one of my favorite things TCM and '40s black-and-white movies, which I know I've said before, recently).
I called as many people back as I could, spent some time on the phone with my older boy and my dearest friend (I talked to my daughter earlier, she's been kind enough to change her schedule around to be the one to take care of my in my first week of recovery) and now I'm writing this to say poetry saved me again, as well as black-and-white movies and the love of my children and family and dear friends. The day I got home from the hospital after a long stay (longer than usual) after they took my prostate out and the cancer in it with it, my friend Harry Northup's book REUNIONS arrived in the mail and when I felt up to it I started to read it and it brought me so much joy it instantly renewed my love of books, my love of poetry in particular, and my love of the honest creative expressions of others that seem so vital when we're going through tough times.
Today in the mail I received a little book of poems and artwork, all by my friend Geoff Young, and all so full of life and intelligence and experience and unique ways of using language to get at the important stuff while seeming to be making light of it all. Just what the doctor ordered. A little book called NOT TWICE ENOUGH he printed at Kwik Print in Great Barrington in a run of just 100 copies. It's beautiful in every way—the art, the poems, and the spirit behind and moving through it all.
I'll have to do a post on it when I get back from the hospital, but here's a taste:
"WHEN YOU GET THAT
Love how your bow's nothing but a blur
when you get that geothermal thing going
on Paganini's "24 Caprices"
and the way you toss your hair
like Midori at a bus shelter
closing a cell-phone with her chin.
I'm all ears when you ask me to trim
your short hairs; intimacy is a pair
of scissors. The art world may have swept
the painter of the moment off her feet
for painting "Fred As A Bee-Hive"
but we're closing in on the spot
where words fall silent and breath's so warm
we're laughing inside to feel this alive."
I've been reading a poem in it every now and then since it arrived in the mail around noon and made me smile when I read the first poem. I'm a happy man. I had some quickly passing worries that I hadn't written that book to my little guy where I wanted to tell him everything I've learned, or the one about my good friend Hubert Selby and all we shared, or my Hollywood adventures, or....
But then I was reminded by my friend Terence of all I've already done, and that I'll have plenty of time to do all I'm still planning to. Finally I said goodnight to my younger son and his mom and now it's time to slip between the sheets and go to sleep—one of my favorite things, getting into bed at night and feeling the comfort of clean sheets and the weight of the cover and quilt etc. Once a young woman I was seeing in L.A. remarked, when I expressed how happy it made me to get into a nice warm clean bed at night (especially since I'd spent time sleeping in lots of not so clean or warm or happy places in my life), she said "That's why you're not more successful, you're too easily satisfied!").
Thank God for that.
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