My very old dog is back home tonight in the City. She has been in the country for several months for a bunch of reasons, but mainly to escape the heat.
She has a very nice life in the country–grass, dirt, trees, more grass, plenty of affection.
But she was raised in the City and home is home. Not just where the heart is, but where the memories of the heart are.
Also a lot of interesting smells.
Sorry, sorry, the title of this post is a bit misleading. The poem is about picking up the phone, not picking up in a bar. However, bloggers like stats; provocativeness improves stats; and well, I’m sure you are picking up the gist of this.
All that said, here’s the poem:
When you don’t pick up
One reason I hate so much
the times you don’t pick up
is that they throw me into
a certain (but I hope distant)
moment in which you are truly gone
or I am gone, when whichever
of us is left will have
no one to call, though perhaps
we will still call–knowing me, I won’t
be able to stop–but we
will have no one to answer, though certainly
you will try out of steadfast love
to answer, and me because I can never
shut up–but still, it will not
be an answer that says,”I’m coming,
I’m almost there,” or if it does, it will
be that rather tricky coming of
the nearly departed, which, of course,
is not what either of us want exactly,
at least
not at this present moment,
which
is why I really do wish
you’d stay near a phone always
so that I could gather up
your sweet hello
every single time I call and know, yes,
that you are coming, yes,
that you are still here.
(All rights reserved.)
An article, “An Immune System Trained to Kill Cancer,” in yesterday’s New York Times tells of a potential new cancer treatment that reprograms the T-cells (white blood cells) of cancer patients with new genes especially armed to fight cancer.
The article (by Denise Grady) details the work of a team of scientists at University of Pennsylvania, led by Dr. Carl June, and describes the cases of three patients whose last stage cancer was apparently put in partial or full remission due to the treatment.
The treatment relies, amazingly, on an altered HIV-1 virus (the virus that causes AIDS):
“The AIDS virus is a natural for this kind of treatment, Dr. June said, because it evolved to invade T-cells. The idea of putting any form of the AIDS virus into people sounds a bit frightening, he acknowledged, but the virus used by his team was “gutted” and was no longer harmful. Other researchers had altered and disabled the virus by adding DNA from humans, mice and cows, and from a virus that infects woodchucks and another that infects cows. Each bit was chosen for a particular trait, all pieced together into a vector that Dr. June called a ‘Rube Goldberg-like solution” and “truly a zoo.’”
I want to emphasize a couple of important words here. How about ”evolved?” And “DNA?”
I guess I’m still thinking about the CNN Tea Party Republican debate last night at the Florida State Fair. It just seems very strange to me to have leaders talking about their superior approach to health care and education, their closer relationship to smart phones as opposed to pay phones, who also profess not to believe in the theory of evolution, or who are, at least, unwilling to own up to such a belief.
Thank you, Dr. Carl June, and other oncologists involved in this fascinating, and evolving, research.
Watching Republican Debate. As at lots of debates, they each are trying very hard to bring the best apple for the teacher (today, the Tea Party.)
Except perhaps for Ron Paul, who is almost painfully consistent here. I’m not sure that I agree with him, but it’s hard not to find him refreshing in his sincerity, willing to see his point through no matter how his audience responds.
11:00 P.M. September 11, 2011.
It feels, somehow, like the start of a new decade.
Who knows what tomorrow may bring?
The only thing we can be sure of is that it won’t be yesterday.
Well, actually, there’s another thing that I personally can be pretty sure of–that I will probably complain about whatever tomorrow does bring, at least a little bit.
But from my perspective–right here, right now, breathing in, breathing out, typing and not-typing, and (okay, okay) with my nose slightly stuffed, stomach slightly cramped (those are some of the current complaints–oh yes, and an occasional pulsation in the ears and I’m also kind of broke), it’s amazing, wonderful.
When I first moved to New York, I lived on Mott and Houston. All my prior experience of New York had been situated on the Upper East Side, a perfect grid of numbered streets, famous avenues, Central Park.
Now I was just north of Chinatown and Little Italy, beyond the scope of integers. (For non-New Yorkers, Houston, if numbered, would be approximately zero street. The island goes on about for hundred or so blocks south.)
But who knew from south? Or north? Uptown/downtown?
How, when I came out of the subway, and hardly knew right from left, could I find my way anyhere? Even home?
A friend clued me in. Look for the twin towers. Way downtown. Anywhere else was up.
And there they were. Always to be found. Gleaming silver through blue, haze, cloudscape, twilight. Twinkling in the middle of the night. Perhaps not the most distinguished buildings, but sentinels, and in their way, completely thrilling. You are in New York City, they said, the BIG BIG apple. A place where, when you look up, you need to crane your neck.
I don’t want to write here about the sight of the planes, the fireball, the anguished streets.
What I want to write of is September 12th. A friend called us early in the a.m. “We have to do something,” she said.
So, she and her kids came over, and, first things first, we baked. Chocolate chip cookies for the rescue workers. Then made sandwiches. Then took everything to St. Vincent’s Hospital, a would-be triage center. (There were, unfortunately, virtually no wounded; almost everyone at the towers died at once.) As the day went on, we made the rounds of local restaurants, collecting buckets of ice (it was a hot day and we were told that ice was somehow needed), even later, sorted pairs of tube socks (it was supposed to turn cold that night. )
As the skies grew orange, then purple, then dim dark grey, with smoke, dust, lights, we took our baggies of chocolate chip cookies, bandanas wrapped over our mouths and noses, to the West Side Highway, handing them through the truck windows of workers going to and from the site. They kindly took them, one guy even handing us back face masks to wear in place of our scarves.
I don’t know if anyone actually ate the cookies, wore the socks, but making them, collecting them, made our lives sweeter, stabilized our feet, gave us for those couple of days at least, some direction; a sense of which way was up.
I give thanks.
For a poem about 9/11 the day.
9/9/11
I wake this morning in lower
Manhattan to the broken
record roar of helicopter hover,
finding my heartbeat synchronous–
pa-nic-nic-nic-nic-nic,
not wanting to be here
anymore right now
September 9, 2011.
Remember a woman, blonde,
with a blue knit cap, December 2001,
caught at the edge
of the slope, her skis sideways, stuck aslant,
afraid to just slide down, to
stay still too; she’d brought
her kids for fun, her husband
gone, they’d only found his
hand, itself lucky. My own
husband reached out his
across the cold,
coaxing her restart.
Away today, he tells me,
over the phone, not to worry
about participating in any event, hoopla,
no disrespect intended.
(As always all rights reserved.)
As followers of this blog undoubtedly know, I am a fan of President Obama.
As I write that, a part of me takes a very deep breath. That’s the part of me that feels quite fearful in these divisive and partisan times to go public with any political allegiance. (Could it cost me something? Job? Friends? Readers? Respect?)
So why post it then? Why take a chance with a stance?
We live, as the Chinese would say, in “interesting times.” All times are probably interesting to those who live in them, but we live in ours and they feel particularly fraught with confusion, division, incipient risk.
While these interesting times have many aspects that are far beyond on our control, we are amazingly quick to cede control where we do have it. Many people just don’t pay attention, don’t read, don’t vote. Many feel like politics are a lost cause, that there is no difference between parties or candidates, and, shrugging dismissively, just don’t bother.
I may be naive, but I feel like there are differences and that it’s important to try to figure these differences out, and finally, to speak out about them. The speaking out is not intended to increase the divisions in the society, or even, necessarily, to persuade (although that would be nice), but really to humanize the point of view.
If I speak out, it lets others see one more example of someone that holds a certain view, one more possibility in a bigger group. Each individual that speaks out makes a viewpoint harder to dismiss. I suppose it’s a bit like being a domino in a row, except in this case, one is a human domino, with particular warts and eccentricities and style of grin and a human domino is a bit hard to flick away with a finger.
The long and short of all this is that I was impressed by Obama’s job speech, thought it set forth a viable plan in a clear and passionate manner, and is worthy of support.
After I stopped exercising
I worked out today, not while writing my blog on the elliptical machine, but while listening to the elliptical debate of the Republican presidential candidates.
Two of the meanings of “elliptic” according to the Free Dictionary (okay, not the most authoritative source but good enough) are:
“a. Of or relating to extreme economy of oral or written expression.
b. Marked by deliberate obscurity of style or expression.”
These two meanings seem at first contradictory. As someone whose tends both to run on and muddle, I would normally characterize ‘economic’ expression as clear/precise.
And yet, as I listened to the Republican debaters, the two meanings of elliptic meshed. Almost every candidate tried to pepper his or her answers with catch phrases–lines that were short and memorable–but hopefully not clear enough to alienate. (Economic ideas, that is, solutions for the economy–other than “fix it,” “grow it,” “trust in Amex,” and forget about anything green, except for cash, seemed especially obscure.)
A few odd juxtapositions: Governor Perry, when attacked for his executive order requiring young girls to get vaccinated against HPV, claimed that he will always err on the side of life. Later, Perry said, however, in a voice that grew more gun-smokey as his answer went on, that his sleep was never troubled by the high number of executions in Texas. v Romney talking about poorer non-taxpaying Americans as not supporting the troops. (Ahem, Mitt, who makes up most of the troops?) Bachmann inviting Ronald Reagan into the no-raising taxes pledge group.
Those juxtapositions could probably be labeled as trivial. But one, which was particular to me, seemed more serious. This arose not from what the Republican candidates said, but from my particular day. With all the emphasis on 9/11 here in NYC, a friend had me listen to a very sad clip about Welles Crowther (the “man with the red bandana”), a young Boston College grad, fledgling securities trader, who led two groups of people down from the 79th floor of the South Tower through the only usable staircase to the safety of ascending firefighters on the 62nd floor. On his third time up to see whom else he could help, Crowther was caught in the Tower’s collapse.
Catastrophe–disaster–emergency often seems to bring out the best in people. In contrast longer-term hardship, a state of emergency that becomes the norm, seems sometimes to wear down those generous instincts–that desire to help others, to step into the brink. (Perhaps not in extraordinary people like Welles Crowther but certainly in many others. )
In the end, it was a kind of brittleness, a worn-down hardness, that I found most troubling in some of the candidates–a hardness towards the Ponzi-profiting elderly, FEMA-depleting disaster victims, uneducated children, and even towards that old conspiracy-promoting inconveniently-warming Planet Earth.
(PS – in interests of disclosure, I missed beginning half of debate in which I understand there were a lot of very odd juxtapositions–Perry/Hilarycare/jobs under Dukakis, etc. etc.)
Back in the City and my good old multitasking ways, i.e. writing this blog while on the elliptical machine.
There are some great benefits to writing at the gym:
1. Your expectations of both your physical and cognitive performance are automatically lowered the minute you pull out your pen–not only do you not have tea and a madeleine but you are actively pumping your legs. Also, who can be Usain Bolt while writing longhand?
2. No distractions – fellow gym rats tend not to talk to someone scribbling in a composition book.
3. Low cost entertainment – a notebook and pen are substantially cheaper than an iPod.
4. A really great idea (which has not yet come to me) is a perfect reason to cut short your work-out.
5. The need to exercise your upper body is a perfect reason to cut short your blog.
6. The sound of that energizer bunny guy on the Stairmaster (which, when trying to write, bores into your eardrums) makes you feel completely unmanic.
7. The sight of that other guy staring blankly into the air in between nautilus reps (you can’t help staring at him as you try to come up with something to say) makes you feel amazingly prolific.
8. Work those thighs.
9. And fingers.
10. Too late for the abs though; i.e. lost cause.
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