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.

JUST A COUPLE OF LATE NIGHT QUESTIONS

Does anyone know of any rigntwinger who claims to be against the government being involved in healthcare and has proven it by giving up their Medicare? Seems like a lot of those tea party folks are eligible by the looks of them.

Actually, does anyone have the stats on how much of the deficit we could reduce if every rightwinger who claims to be against the government having anything to to with their healthcare gave up their Medicare and any other subsidies the government provides as well as any regulations the government oversees in the healthcare industry?

Man the rest of us could probably have Medicare extended to all of us without it costing anything if only the people who believe in government's role in healthcare and the regulation of the healthcare industry should be zero opted the freak out of all of it and let us have the decent-and-equally-caring-for-all system we want.

Have you noticed (this one's not easy because the "mainstream media" that the right has convinced their followers is "liberal" is actually scared to death of the right) that the healthcare "reforms" being suggested now (on the Sunday talk shows and elsewhere) by the Republicans, who it looks like have been successful in killing the Dems bill, is exactly the same as the ones in the bill they voted against when they were in control of the Congress and presidency?

Just asking. (And before it even happens, we all know the rightwing trolls like "Jim" et. al. will refer to articles from rightwing sources that have as much credibility as Glen Beck recently saying it's the liberals who try to "shout down" their opponents and use horrible tactics like calling people "racists"—forgetting that he called the president "racist" as a way of attacking him and spends most of his waking hours "shouting down" his opponents or would-be opponents and supporting groups like the tea partyers and birthers etc. who use "shout down" tactics as their main strategy).

THE BLIND SIDE

So Sandra Bullock won the SAG Award for best actress in a movie. Kind of unexpected. Meryl Streep was looking like a shoo-in for JULIE & JULIA. But Bullock's win mirrored Jeff Bridges win for best male actor for his portrayal of a drunk country singer in CRAZY HEART.

In a way they were both winning for a career full of terrific acting that mostly went unrecognized. Bridges I've always considered one of our greatest and most underrated film actors. Bullock I have to admit I usually ended up admiring for being able to play such a broad range of blockbuster movie characters from comic to action etc.

But it wasn't until I saw her in CRASH a few years ago that I realized first of all she had some range I wasn't even aware of and that she was willing to subordinate her star status for an ensemble piece in which she didn't even have one of the bigger roles.

Interestingly she mentioned that role in CRASH as the turning point in her career after her decision to chuck the star stuff and actually audition for a role in what she referred to as a small or little movie or maybe she said independent. Whatever. It was clear in her remarks at the SAG Awards that she changed direction in order to prove her chops in serious drama and CRASH was the first step, THE BLIND SIDE some kind of culmination, or at least fulfillment.

I only saw BLIND SIDE last week and was moved to tears by a story I already knew from reading the NY Times Sunday Magazine article (as I remember it) that the book was based on that led to the movie. It's a moving story. Homeless impoverished basically abandoned young African-American boy is taken in by upper middle-class Southern Christian white family and the diminutive mom sets about getting him a good education and the chance to become an NFL star.

The article was better than the movie in some places. There's a lot of smugness in Bullock's character that I found a little irritating at times, and in the script and direction (is it me or are strong, independent successful working black women becoming some kind of target for revenge or at least judgement in a lot of otherwise on-the-surface more tolerant flicks?), especially when it came to the self-righteousness of Bullock's character and the scapegoating of an entire community (lower class "blacks").

But Bullock is such a good actress, or performer maybe, that she pulls it off because she gets you to believe her motives are pure even when the movie itself implies they might not be entirely. It is a terrific performance. And a pretty accomplished transformation. It's easy to accept Bullock as a strong-willed woman, and a successful business woman, but a Southern, blond, politically conservative doyenne of her household turned surrogate mom for an adolescent black giant? To make us believe that, she has to be a terrific actress.

But the real revelation here is Quinton Aaron as Michael Oher, the eventual NFL star. He uses his bulk and his capacity for childlike innocence in the face of enormous emotional trauma so well it's hard to remember he's acting in a movie and not the real Oher.

Jae Head as the littlest wheeler and dealer of the white household Oher becomes a part of is also pretty interesting to watch, even when you get the feeling this kid is almost as "on" as Mickey Rooney always seemed to be. It's still impressive to see a kid work that hard and make that much happen on screen when he's playing off Bullock's experience and talent and Aaron's imposing presence and obvious talent as well.

It's definitely worth seeing, and Bullock deserves some nominations for what she's accomplished in this role, but beating out Streep, let alone so many other women who gave great performances this year that were much deeper and showed an even wider range, not for my taste.

PS TO PREVIOUS POST-BRAIN-0P POSTS

Just wanted to clarify a few things in response to blog comments and e mails and other responses to the brain surgery recovery process.

First of all, as Martha Gelhorn said (one of my favorite writers) and I paraphrase: we can't do much about most of reality, but we can observe and report on it as accurately as we're able. Bear witness to it, as it were. Which is what I try to do and to stick to things I know something about, like my personal experience (including various "careers" and locations and interaction with historic events and movements, and now, obviously, brain surgery recovery).

Secondly, as I hope I've made clear, I don't feel frustrated or disappointed about my health problems (any of them), or almost never, because I accept them as for the most part out of my control. I do my best to do what I've read and been told can help and what the doctors recommend and try not to waste energy on "if only" or "why me" etc. Especially since I feel I have been amazingly lucky when it comes to any of these issues, like the growth in my brain not being cancerous and being entirely removed and my recovery being so fast.

Nor do I feel frustrated or disappointed by friends and other folks who have a different perspective on what I'm going through. In fact I find their comments and responses very useful. For instance, people saying that some of what I'm experiencing they experience too and they haven't had brain surgery has made me look more closely at my experience to see if they're correct from my perspective.

Like the examples I gave in my last post. I was thinking about that last night while falling back asleep after being woken by my 12-year-old around 5AM because his throat was hurting him (we did a spoonful of honey and it seemed to work). And I realized the actual conversation yesterday with a new friend, Richard, at this memorial would demonstrate better what the lapses in my usual brain functioning are like.

Richard has written a screenplay that got some attention at the Austin film festival and I was sharing my experiences in an attempt to, I hope, give him some support and encouragement (sometimes my attempts come off more like self-centeredness I guess, but I've always believed in the theory that we should stick to what we know best and that is ourselves and our own experience). In the process I was telling a story about an agent I had in my Hollywood screenwriting years who dropped me when I asked for an advance on my next project to help me pay some bills as I was broke and raising two teenagers on my own.

The agent was a friend I thought. His son and my older son were in a band together, his wife was a producer I gave a lot of props to and thought of as a friend (and still do though I haven't seen or talked to her in years), etc. But when I asked for the advance, he said he thought it was inappropriate for clients to request money and as a result he had to drop me and did.

But in the course of telling Richard this, I couldn't think of the word for "advance" though I did have the concept in my head. And when I tried to think of it, instead of that sensation most of us have and I still have sometimes as well, where you think the word is really close, "right on the tip of your tongue" as we say, but in this case it wasn't anywhere on my tongue or anywhere else in my brain or body or even in the area, because Richard suggested "You mean an advance" and I said something like "Is that it"" or "Maybe" or some indefinite response because my mind in that area was completely blank, as I described in yesterday's post, as if it had been turned completely off and could not register anything having to do with the concept I was trying to articulate.

See what I mean? What the difference is? It was only today, while writing this, that the word" advance" started to become clear and I could realize, or accept, that yes, that was the word I was looking for almost twenty-four hours ago but not only couldn't find but couldn't even accept when it was given to me, because my brain just could no longer deal with or address or even have any awareness whatsoever of the concept anymore. It just quit in that department until now, a day later.

Interesting, right? At least it is to me. And because I had a pretty big pool of words in my brain already, from using a lot of whatever brain power I had for reading and writing and listening for all these decades, I can generally find another way to say most things. In fact, I notice I've been using a slightly different vocabulary when writing and speaking than I used to, and with a lot less of a filter. For instance, I used to avoid anything too fancy sounding or too complex because of my roots and not wanting to betray them with any kind of intellectual affectation. But now that doesn't seem to enter into my thinking at all, I notice, and whatever word comes to mind, or replaces what doesn't come to mind, I seem to accept without judgement.

One last thing in response to "Harryn's" question about what the neurosurgeon has to say about my current experiences. They don't say much. They test for basic motor and cognitive skills and are happy if they're working and leave the rest to occupational and speech and etc. therapy, which I did for a while but stopped because I was already ahead of where most people get to and didn't want to seem indulgent. And because a lot of the exercises duplicate or are related to what I'm already instinctively doing, like writing these posts every day and reading more each day and pushing the limits of my abilities every day (while recognizing how far I can go, like I am not ready to try driving on a highway yet).

There are so many people I know who are suffering so much more as a result of their health problems, including brain surgeries that didn't turn out as well as mine or with the same results or are suffering from recurrences of Lyme's disease (like my friend Paul) or chronic fatigue or incurable cancers or clinical depressions or etc. These people are actually suffering much more than I am, or have, and my heart and thoughts and prayers go out to them. I'm not suffering, I'm just slightly inconvenienced by my various health issues. I can think pretty well, read and write relatively well, converse pretty much okay (though in a slightly different way than I used to, including, again, even less of a filter on what I say and how I express myself). And physically I'm not in any pain except the usual, or limited in any ways that keep me from spending a lot of great "quality" time, as they say, with my youngest, and when I can with my older two (at least on the phone now) and grandkids and friends and other family members etc. What more could you ask for?

A QUICK THOUGHT ON CURRENT STATE OF BRAIN RECOVERY

I was at a memorial service today for a friend's mother and during a conversation I couldn't remember a word that I've used a million times if once. The person I was speaking with initially brushed it aside as happening to him "all the time." I hear this a lot these days and I appreciate the perspective.

It is true that I have recovered from the brain surgery to such an extent that what I am observing and reporting on here often sounds like "senior moments" or the general forgetfulness we all have when we wonder where we put that thing or what we were on our way to doing etc.

But because it's happening in this single individual's brain, mine, with a history of such forgetfulness that is natural (or the result of earlier personal practices that might have created a few missed synapses) I know the difference.

It's like this—when I forget what I went into the kitchen to get, or where I put my cell phone, or what that person's name is etc. in the old ways, it feels like the record skipped, or like when the satellite or cable connection breaks and the image on the TV screen does that strange cubist kind of break up of the image into odd squares and rectangles etc.

But when I can't remember the word I'm looking for or how to close a bag of cookies with those tabs on the sides at the top or what directions mean in terms of where I live and am familiar with, and it's a result of the brain surgery, it isn't like a record skipping or TV image breaking up, it's like the record player or the TV has been turned off. Nothing. Nada. My mind goes completely blank and feels like an entire area of it has gone missing.

Or another simile, it's like my brain has frozen, as though where there were images and words and what usually makes up most of my mental life when I'm awake or dreaming is turned into a vast white horizonless landscape of white.

I don't know if that helps, but I'm sure anyone with a brain injury will recognize what I'm trying to describe. And once again let me be clear, I know how lucky I am to be able to use my brain at all and the extent to which most of my cognitive abilities have returned. I am so unbelievably grateful for it all, but I am also a writer/observer, and have been all my life, especially OF my life, seeing it since I was a kid as some sort of work of art that I have some control over at the same time I'm also enjoying and critiquing.

Thus this blog and the books and etc.

TEN WEEKS AFTER BRAIN SURGERY

And I'm wiped out. Spending yesterday rearranging books (there's still piles on the floor around my apartment yet to be dealt with, but oh the pleasure of picking up and handling a much loved tome and maybe reading a poem or some lines from one I forgot and all the memories and sensations rushing back of purely "artistic" pleasure, though as sensual and soul satisfying as any other kind) and this blog page (adding images of some of my books to the right etc.).

And then today spending time at a framer's trying to choose frames and mattes or not etc. for a few pieces I'd been meaning to get off the piles in my little alcove office and behind glass to keep them from getting any more browned by the sun and the air or stained from accidents etc.

Pushing my independence and relishing it, I mean in terms of my recovery, maybe a little too much of a cognitive workout. Found my brain turning off somewhere halfway through the frame(s)-decision(s) session (after having driven right past the place initially, though I knew exactly where it was etc. but couldn't remember suddenly).

So, a more restful and less brain busy weekend is my intention. But not too restful.

POST-BRAIN SURGERY UPDATE

It'll be ten weeks tomorrow since the surgery. I know yesterday was also an anniversary, and I had a list prepared of many of the mistakes and miscalculations and outright lies and distortions that led to the mess this country was in on every level after eight years of the Bush/Cheney administration, especially the six when the Republicans controlled everything, and a list of this administration's many accomplishments in just one year.

But with our cognitively challenged society right now when it comes to politics it seems pointless to even bring it up. If a majority of voters think Republicans are better at protecting our security and winning wars (Eisenhower gave up in Korea and we are still facing the consequences in North Korea, Nixon's party lost Viet Nam AND Cambodia etc.; Reagan made a solid promise he would not abandon Lebanon in its hour of need and after what can be seen as the first suicide attack against the USA in some ways when a Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up and hundreds died he reversed that promise and pulled the Marines out and abandoned Lebanon while choosing much easier targets like the tiny island of Grenada etc.; Bush Senior stopped short of ousting Saddam Hussein from Iraq leaving his son to avenge that oversight so poorly the war there has become the longest in our history and gave rise to a stronger and more widespread terrorist network, not to mention ignored the advice of the Clinton/Gore administration about a coming attack from Al Queda involving airplanes attacking the US etc. so have some responsibility for 9/11!) God bless them.

And if they think the Republicans are better at fixing healthcare, or corporate malfeasance, or the economy (the two greatest financial crises in the last century in this country occurred under Republican administrations), et-endlessly-cetera. God bless'em.

As for me, I'm still having some cerebral troubles, like the ones mentioned in yesterday's post, but I'm still recovering in what I see as miraculous ways. For instance, yesterday I got into rearranging the books in my several book cases while listening to music from the iTunes shuffle on my computer. It made me so happy I decided this might be my idea of heaven.

To pick up a book that I have a deep personal connection to, not just the content but as an object (if not I pass them on) while being surprised by some musical juxtaposition I wasn't expecting (Bing Crosby to Bob Dylan to Lester Young to James Horner to The Band, etc.) and recordings that hold an equally powerful personal connection for me...

especially when only weeks ago I couldn't read or write and had almost no interest in books and couldn't listen to music or only a limited amount etc. etc.

And today I actually did some rearranging on my blog you might have noticed, prompted by my oldest son Miles. It was relatively easy, but I still had a lot of trouble and didn't get it the way I wanted it, but close enough. And it took all day (as did yesterday, I still haven't finished either actually but got tired and took a break, maybe indefinitely!).

But what a miracle it seems to me after these recent weeks to even care about books again (even if I'm still not into reading straight prose books yet) and music (I still have trouble with that too, a CD poet Beth Joselow burned for me for my recovery I still can't get onto my computer in a way that lets me play it). For which I am enormously grateful, as I am for all that the Obama administration has accomplished in one short year, even if I don't like some things still not done or some of the characters he's got working for him (Rham Emmanuel always seemed like the wrong choice for these times and problems). Oh well.

[PS For another brief take on the first year see here and here for another great RJ Eskow take, this one on the Mass. election.]