QUICK POST-BRAIN OP COMMENT & A CLASS ACT (WELL, MAYBE NOT SO QUICK)

Just a fast update on my progress halfway into the eleventh week since brain surgery.

I have changed. I still have mostly the same personality and most of the same motor and cognitive skills (or lack of them), but there have been big and small changes that may or may not go away, but are with me now.

I continue to have trouble writing, and reading books of prose that are structured as one long story or examination of one subject etc. Broken up prose I can take no matter how dense, though the more direct and clear and well written the better. But novels, bios, memoirs, histories, etc. right now are too demanding.

I tried reading the first few chapters of an extensive memoir I've been working on for years now and couldn't do it. And I haven't been able to write anything more than these posts and comments on this blog and a few others.

I also notice my thoughts are even more unfiltered than ever (see previous post comments). I am still feeling totally fortunate for my recovery and not having cancer in my brain and the wonderful outpouring of sympathy and prayers and well wishes. And I feel almost a constant sense of not just gratitude but joy.

However I have much less tolerance for the lies and distortions and cynical manipulation of the media and public discourse that has made these times so disappointingly irrational and counter productive.

I also continue to be a bit challenged by everyday life. I went to the local Whole Foods today by myself for the second time (I think) since the operation and found myself a little disoriented at times. Nothing to cause worry, just to cause a sense of "Oh, this isn't the way it used to be." [Just to clarify, I was in complete control of my faculties and knew where I was and what I was getting and got it with no trouble, it just seemed kind of strange to be doing it.]

I still have to correct what seem like "typos" in these posts and comments before publishing them, but they're not typos because I make similar "mistakes" when I write by hand (yesterday in a note I wrote "fife" for "life" etc.).

And I continue to want to limit if not curtail my exposure to negativity from any quarter, whether movies, commenters, music, etc. I'll still try to see movies that seem to have something worthwhile going for them etc. but prefer and intend to respond as much as possible to the things that I find uplifting or enlightening in ways that offer solutions or redemption or the possibility, at least, of love.

I thought Conan Obrien's final words on his last TONIGHT show summed up my attitude pretty well. Here's a link to that, but you have to watch until the end to get to the part I mean. He proved himself a class act in the end. I know I always haven't been and always won't be, but I refuse to buy into the cynicism that has been used by the right as a tool to distract and disillusion most voters who don't care about political parties but only about results so that they will become cynical and not vote leaving the small minority that is the rightwing base to sway elections in their favor and when their failures are too blatant to make that happen (ala 2008 election) do everything they can to distract and disillusion voters about their choice so they will give up in frustration and leave the field to the right's candidates and policies, which have damaged this country to badly over the past several decades and particularly the eight years of the previous administration that many have given up.

All you have to know about rightwing ideology is that it led to the Supreme Court overturning almost a century of American law to declare corporations individuals with the right of "free speech" allowing them to spend any amount of money they wish on political campaigns. Changing the interpretation of laws that had been in effect since the very idea of corporations became prominent in the business of this country. Meaning the rightwingers took an activist position, as they would say, to reinterpret the constitution to mean that the founding fathers were thinking of the possibility of huge corporations being considered "individuals" and being given the right to buy elections. Washington and Jefferson and even Adams are turning over in their graves.