one cold and drizzly afternoon last week I decided to
spend the afternoon reading. I was sitting in the lazyboy
listening to music and perusing CLAPTON ( eric clapton's autobiography) when he really grabbed my attention by using the term "gobsmacked". the
dictionary states it is British slang meaning flabbergasted or being struck dumb with awe or amazement. The book is mostly the story of clapton's
recovery from drug and alcohol addiction with his love of music providing the staying power to pull him thru from
sucidial despair to a peacefull and happy family life. Besides being a successfull musician he founded a
drug and alcohol rehabilation center called Crossroads
in Antigua. After finishing that i read Into the Wild. I had
recently seen the movie which i was gobsmacked by.
It may be my favorite film of the year.
Robert Hass won the National Book Award for poetry .
Happiness
Because yesterday morning from the steamy window
we saw a pair of red foxes across the creek
eating the last windfall apples in the rain—
they looked up at us with their green eyes
long enough to symbolize the wakefulness of living things
and then went back to eating—
and because this morning
when she went into the gazebo with her black pen and yellow pad
to coax an inquisitive soul
from what she thinks of as the reluctance of matter,
I drove into town to drink tea in the café
and write notes in a journal—mist rose from the bay
like the luminous and indefinite aspect of intention,
and a small flock of tundra swans
for the second winter in a row was feeding on new grass
in the soaked fields; they symbolize mystery, I suppose,
they are also called whistling swans, are very white,
and their eyes are black—
and because the tea steamed in front of me,
and the notebook, turned to a new page,
was blank except for the faint idea of order,
I wrote: happiness! It is December, very cold,
we woke early this morning,
and lay in bed kissing,
our eyes squinched up like bats.
On a more personal note my neurologist's tests showed nothing conclusive but
ruled out brain problems. he believes the seizure was caused by pacemaker failure
but he said he could not prove it. He said I can quit the anti-seizure drugs and apply
for exception to the 6 months legal limitation of no driving. However he said the application
would probably take several months to process. So I probably won't be driving till march.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Sunday, November 4, 2007
my neurologist said....
my neurologist said seizure was most probably heart related.
If caused by pace-maker we will probably
never know. He cut back anti-seizure med dosage
and thinks it will lessen some side effects.
He suggests two more tests
and if they show brain normal then he would
take me off anti-seizure med and send me back
to heart doctors ( from whom i'm still awaiting
results of tests ).
Iowa law says if you have seizure and pass out
you must go 6 months without another before you can drive again.
If cause is determined then you can apply for
exception. However the application process takes
several months so bottom line is i probably won't be
able to drive until March.
News so discouraging that it gave me a bad cold and
put me out of commision for a few days.
not that it has anything to do with anything but i 've
always liked the Mad Gardener's Song by Lewis Carroll
...
He thought he saw a Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
'A fact so dread,' he faintly said,
'Extinguishes all hope!'
-- Lewis Carroll
the subject of this post "my neurologist said..." reminds me
of a Hal Sirowitz poem. Here are some samples:
Hal Sirowitz
Don't Talk Back
(from My Therapist Said)
There are two sides to every story,
Mother said, but since I'm the adult
& you're the child, only my side counts.
Yours will count, too, one of these days,
but right now your job is to listen,
so when it's your turn to be a parent
& your child tries to interrupt youwhile you're speaking, you'll know what to say.
Psychology Books
(from My Therapist Said)
Some therapists don't let their patients read Freud, my therapist said. But you can read as many of his books as you like. You can read Horney, Adler, & Jung, too. I read some of their books. I'm not afraid of the competition. They can never be as good as I am at telling you what you need to do. They never knew you.
Girlfriend Over for Dinner
(from Mother Said)
She's very pretty, Mother said, but she's going to leave you.
She was talking about her future, & you weren't in it, so I asked her to tell it to me again, just in case she made a mistake & left you out, but you weren't in the second version either.
She talked about going away to school, & when I asked her what she was planning to bring with her, she talked about her coat, her boots, but she never mentioned you.She says she's fond of you, but people say that about puppies they're about to give away.
If caused by pace-maker we will probably
never know. He cut back anti-seizure med dosage
and thinks it will lessen some side effects.
He suggests two more tests
and if they show brain normal then he would
take me off anti-seizure med and send me back
to heart doctors ( from whom i'm still awaiting
results of tests ).
Iowa law says if you have seizure and pass out
you must go 6 months without another before you can drive again.
If cause is determined then you can apply for
exception. However the application process takes
several months so bottom line is i probably won't be
able to drive until March.
News so discouraging that it gave me a bad cold and
put me out of commision for a few days.
not that it has anything to do with anything but i 've
always liked the Mad Gardener's Song by Lewis Carroll
...
He thought he saw a Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
'A fact so dread,' he faintly said,
'Extinguishes all hope!'
-- Lewis Carroll
the subject of this post "my neurologist said..." reminds me
of a Hal Sirowitz poem. Here are some samples:
Hal Sirowitz
Don't Talk Back
(from My Therapist Said)
There are two sides to every story,
Mother said, but since I'm the adult
& you're the child, only my side counts.
Yours will count, too, one of these days,
but right now your job is to listen,
so when it's your turn to be a parent
& your child tries to interrupt youwhile you're speaking, you'll know what to say.
Psychology Books
(from My Therapist Said)
Some therapists don't let their patients read Freud, my therapist said. But you can read as many of his books as you like. You can read Horney, Adler, & Jung, too. I read some of their books. I'm not afraid of the competition. They can never be as good as I am at telling you what you need to do. They never knew you.
Girlfriend Over for Dinner
(from Mother Said)
She's very pretty, Mother said, but she's going to leave you.
She was talking about her future, & you weren't in it, so I asked her to tell it to me again, just in case she made a mistake & left you out, but you weren't in the second version either.
She talked about going away to school, & when I asked her what she was planning to bring with her, she talked about her coat, her boots, but she never mentioned you.She says she's fond of you, but people say that about puppies they're about to give away.
Monday, October 22, 2007
retirement is great
retirement is great: you can worry obsessively about all your health issues without
distraction. nothing new to report. still awaiting results of tests and waiting to see neurologist.
i may be becoming a bit of a pain but so far i haven't got tired of replying to anyone who says " gotta run, i've gotta go to work" . "oh, i don't have to go today" .
I finished an excellent book last week. I enjoyed it alot and i may not have been the only one who liked it since it won the Nat'l Book award last year:
by Richard Powers
The Echo Maker
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
About the Book
Set in Nebraska during the Platte River’s massive spring migrations, this novel explores the power and limits of human intelligence.
About the Author
Richard Powers is the author of eight previous novels, including Operation Wandering Soul, which was a nominated for a National Book Award in 1993. He has received numerous honors including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. He lives in Illinois.
Not everyone liked it i guess. here is an excerpt from a not so glowing review in the NATION:
Richard Powers has a lot of ideas: complex, articulate, deeply informed ideas about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, relativity, genetics, music and much more. But poems, as Mallarmé told Degas, are not made of ideas, and neither are novels. The Echo Maker will tell you a great deal about neuroscience, environmental degradation and the migratory patterns of the sandhill crane, but like Powers's other novels, it won't tell you much about what its laboriously accumulated information and elaborately constructed concepts have to do with what it means to be alive at a particular time and place, or what it feels like. And that, crudely put, is what novels are for. .....
distraction. nothing new to report. still awaiting results of tests and waiting to see neurologist.
i may be becoming a bit of a pain but so far i haven't got tired of replying to anyone who says " gotta run, i've gotta go to work" . "oh, i don't have to go today" .
I finished an excellent book last week. I enjoyed it alot and i may not have been the only one who liked it since it won the Nat'l Book award last year:
by Richard Powers
The Echo Maker
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
About the Book
Set in Nebraska during the Platte River’s massive spring migrations, this novel explores the power and limits of human intelligence.
About the Author
Richard Powers is the author of eight previous novels, including Operation Wandering Soul, which was a nominated for a National Book Award in 1993. He has received numerous honors including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. He lives in Illinois.
Not everyone liked it i guess. here is an excerpt from a not so glowing review in the NATION:
Richard Powers has a lot of ideas: complex, articulate, deeply informed ideas about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, relativity, genetics, music and much more. But poems, as Mallarmé told Degas, are not made of ideas, and neither are novels. The Echo Maker will tell you a great deal about neuroscience, environmental degradation and the migratory patterns of the sandhill crane, but like Powers's other novels, it won't tell you much about what its laboriously accumulated information and elaborately constructed concepts have to do with what it means to be alive at a particular time and place, or what it feels like. And that, crudely put, is what novels are for. .....
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Thoughts on turning 60
i don't consider it a great accomplishment. millions do it.
It just reminds me of the old days which seem to keep getting better.
When asked when my birthday was I once thought it clever to reply
that it was the day before Friedrich Nietzsche's so every October 15th
I would remember my birthday was the day before. Thus employing the
logic of one of my favorite grooks on Timing Toast by Piet Hein:
TIMING TOAST
Grook on how to char for yourself
There's an art to knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
twenty seconds less.
(A grook ("gruk" in Danish) is a form of short aphoristic poem. It was invented by the Danish poet and scientist Piet Hein. He wrote over 7,000 of them, most in Danish or
English, published in 20 volumes. Some say that the name is short for "GRin & sUK" ("laugh & sigh" in Danish), but Piet Hein said he felt that the word had come out of thin
air. His gruks first started to appear in the daily newspaper "Politiken" shortly after the Nazi Occupation in April 1940 under the signature Kumbel Kumbell. The poems were
meant as a spirit-building, yet slightly coded form of passive resistance against Nazi occupation during World War II. The grook are characterized by irony, paradox, brevity,
precise use of language, sophisticated rhythms and rhymes and often satiric nature.)
Speaking of the 60's on my birthday we saw the nostalgic musical film "Across the Universe".
Sort of like HAIR only with all Beatles music. I really enjoyed it though it brought back some
painful memories of when it seemed "events were in the saddle and ride mankind" (Emerson)
and Yeats "Second Coming" was truer than ever :
...
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand...
It just reminds me of the old days which seem to keep getting better.
When asked when my birthday was I once thought it clever to reply
that it was the day before Friedrich Nietzsche's so every October 15th
I would remember my birthday was the day before. Thus employing the
logic of one of my favorite grooks on Timing Toast by Piet Hein:
TIMING TOAST
Grook on how to char for yourself
There's an art to knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
twenty seconds less.
(A grook ("gruk" in Danish) is a form of short aphoristic poem. It was invented by the Danish poet and scientist Piet Hein. He wrote over 7,000 of them, most in Danish or
English, published in 20 volumes. Some say that the name is short for "GRin & sUK" ("laugh & sigh" in Danish), but Piet Hein said he felt that the word had come out of thin
air. His gruks first started to appear in the daily newspaper "Politiken" shortly after the Nazi Occupation in April 1940 under the signature Kumbel Kumbell. The poems were
meant as a spirit-building, yet slightly coded form of passive resistance against Nazi occupation during World War II. The grook are characterized by irony, paradox, brevity,
precise use of language, sophisticated rhythms and rhymes and often satiric nature.)
Speaking of the 60's on my birthday we saw the nostalgic musical film "Across the Universe".
Sort of like HAIR only with all Beatles music. I really enjoyed it though it brought back some
painful memories of when it seemed "events were in the saddle and ride mankind" (Emerson)
and Yeats "Second Coming" was truer than ever :
...
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand...
Friday, October 12, 2007
doing ok
new pacemaker seems to be working ok. i'll go over to fitness center today and give it a test drive around the block.
the National Book Award nominations were announced yesterday. David Kirby was nominated in Poetry. He is a poet i think is noteworthy. The other nominees were:
Poetry
Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North (Houghton Mifflin Company)
Robert Hass, Time and Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins)
David Kirby, The House on Boulevard St. (Louisiana State University Press)
Stanley Plumly, Old Heart (W.W. Norton & Company)
Ellen Bryant Voigt, Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006 (W.W. Norton & Company)
here is a sample :
Broken Promises
By David Kirby
I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed;
I have seem them playing cards under a single light-bulb
and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely,
knowing I would only let them win.
I have seen them in the foyers of theaters,
coming back late from the interval
long after the others have taken their seats,
and in deserted shopping malls late at night,
peering at things they can never buy,
and I have found them wandering
in a wood where I too have wandered.
This morning I caught one;
small and stupid, too slow to get away,
it was only a promise I had made to myself once
and then forgot, but it screamed and kicked at me
and ran to join the others, who looked at me with reproach
in their long, sad faces.
When I drew near them, they scurried away,
even though they will sleep in my yard tonight.
I hate them for their ingratitude,
I who have kept countless promises,
as dead now as Shakespeare's children.
"You bastards," I scream,
"you have to love me—I gave you life!"
David Kirby, "Broken Promises" from Big-Leg Music (Washington, DC: Orchises Press, 1995).
the National Book Award nominations were announced yesterday. David Kirby was nominated in Poetry. He is a poet i think is noteworthy. The other nominees were:
Poetry
Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North (Houghton Mifflin Company)
Robert Hass, Time and Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins)
David Kirby, The House on Boulevard St. (Louisiana State University Press)
Stanley Plumly, Old Heart (W.W. Norton & Company)
Ellen Bryant Voigt, Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006 (W.W. Norton & Company)
here is a sample :
Broken Promises
By David Kirby
I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed;
I have seem them playing cards under a single light-bulb
and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely,
knowing I would only let them win.
I have seen them in the foyers of theaters,
coming back late from the interval
long after the others have taken their seats,
and in deserted shopping malls late at night,
peering at things they can never buy,
and I have found them wandering
in a wood where I too have wandered.
This morning I caught one;
small and stupid, too slow to get away,
it was only a promise I had made to myself once
and then forgot, but it screamed and kicked at me
and ran to join the others, who looked at me with reproach
in their long, sad faces.
When I drew near them, they scurried away,
even though they will sleep in my yard tonight.
I hate them for their ingratitude,
I who have kept countless promises,
as dead now as Shakespeare's children.
"You bastards," I scream,
"you have to love me—I gave you life!"
David Kirby, "Broken Promises" from Big-Leg Music (Washington, DC: Orchises Press, 1995).
Thursday, October 11, 2007
smooth as a sow's ear
The pace maker change out went smoothly (or as the iowa heart referred to it the "generator change out"). I had to ask because they kept saying generator and not pacemaker so they explained the terminology to me. The pacemaker is the generator aka
battery plus the wire leads that connect the "battery" to the heart's electrical nodes.
Since they did not have to replace the wires they call it a generator change out.
I have to take it easy for a couple of days to let the incision heal but i plan on
excercising tomorrow. I had been feeling extremely lethargic for awhile so i'm anxious to see if the new "battery" helps. i think it includes a new computer too.
I was unsure if the tiredness was due the battery being low or the anti-seizure meds or both.
I just heard Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Litature :
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
Doris Lessing
battery plus the wire leads that connect the "battery" to the heart's electrical nodes.
Since they did not have to replace the wires they call it a generator change out.
I have to take it easy for a couple of days to let the incision heal but i plan on
excercising tomorrow. I had been feeling extremely lethargic for awhile so i'm anxious to see if the new "battery" helps. i think it includes a new computer too.
I was unsure if the tiredness was due the battery being low or the anti-seizure meds or both.
I just heard Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Litature :
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
Doris Lessing
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
pace maker
my pace maker check today showed that my battery is low so they will replace it October 10th at 12:30 pm. I shouldn't have to stay overnight. So i guess i'm getting a new pacemaker for my birthday.
the staff at Iowa Heart couldn't tell if that had anything to do with my seizure but
they did not think so at least there was no information that indicated it did. I will have to see what the neurologist says October 31st.
My sister pointed out to me that my neurologist name is not Dr. Feelgood as i first optimistically thought but Dr Freedgood.
the staff at Iowa Heart couldn't tell if that had anything to do with my seizure but
they did not think so at least there was no information that indicated it did. I will have to see what the neurologist says October 31st.
My sister pointed out to me that my neurologist name is not Dr. Feelgood as i first optimistically thought but Dr Freedgood.
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