Stepping Around

So how do you step from a parochial blog about a guy with cancer to what it used to be - stuff I was interested in, and didn't care who read it. I guess you can go in baby steps - write about other people's medical issues - health care - or doctors as an endangered profession. Or about life changes, and aging, and backwards aging - or the current distinctions between generations that seem so slight compared to the generational gap that was the crucible of the '60's...

Nah.

I'd rather go off the road entirely.

Brooks has a column today that circles around what I have long thought was the most important political issue out there. I used to put it as a thought problem in Cold War terms: what if the Soviet system worked better than ours, economically. Would we opt for that, or would we accept a lesser standard of living in order to keep our personal freedom?

The Brooks piece puts it in the 21st century context because the question is fast becoming non-hypothetical. That is, there is now a working, competing model of capitalism, especially in China - what he calls state capitalism - which may well seem more attractive to some populations than ours.

The state version may be more attractive because it makes people more personally secure, or because it is more nationalistic. It may be more collective, or cooperative, or it may require more sublimation of personal desire to the greater good. But whatever its appeal to these other ideals (if that's what they are), the rubber really meets the road if the system wins economically. If it makes people richer faster.

An older version of this was the worry about democracy, and how it could last. Lots of Greeks wondered about democracy, and posited arguments why it was bound to fail. Like the idea that the demos would eventually take over the fisc and drive out the wealth-creators, leading to dictatorship. Variations on that.

And state capitalism certainly isn't new - I had friends at Princeton who thought that state-sponsored and -guided capitalism, plus antisemitism, was fascism. And therefore, the logic ran, remove the antisemitism and you might have an interesting system.

Nontheless the debate seems new, after the triumph of the American Century and the notions that democracy is good, peace is good, free enterprise is OK because it enables democracy, and even (the neoconservative premise that few still buy) democracy makes the world more peaceful. I'm still kind of stuck there. But my guess is that this state capitalism idea will be re-branded in America, trotted before us and championed by some element of the elite. And freedom will come to seem old-fashioned and - as Jon Stewart once said to Rolling Stone - overrated.

Back to the Desktop

I took a brief vacation from this enterprise, in part because I wanted to think of another approach to this stage of events. Last time, I said sayonara cancer but the bastard snuck back. I'm now tempted to say sayonara again - especially since I think the literal translation is something like, "if it be thus." Nicely ambiguous. None of the rest of the immediate candidates works - not good-bye, not farewell, not adios, and certainly not au revoir.

And hello... what. Again, lots of brave stuff last time, some of it now sounding hollow. Hello rest of my life, of course. But we all can (and probably should) say that every morning.

A few things have, in any event, changed.

• The music bands are disbanded. I am trying to work out my own style of piano, something St. Louis - a mix of New Orleans and ragtime, if I can. And if there is any way I can get the first phases of practicing the accordion behind me, it's theoretically perfect - a minstrel.
  
• I'm going to church, of all things, a relatively-high Episcopal place with the finest music you can imagine. A great place, I find, for my tribal connections. I went to an Episcopal church as I grew up, it was the place of my first paying job, and I went to an Episcopalian boarding school. I remember Mom and Dad so clearly while in the pew - ancestor worship, of a kind. So what if I'm an agnostic. If God makes any sense, God made me an agnostic. If God wants me to change, and if God makes any sense, God will. Inshallah, as we used to hear all the time in Saudi Arabia, with a shrug, an Arab version of whatever.
• And of course there's this new wardrobe. Only it's not really new. It's stuff I had in the basement, much from long ago. A double-breasted suit last night that I bought when we lived in London in 1985. Wait 'til I strap on my linen suit. Woo-woo.

So there's cause for celebration, and I look for ways. Today I'm thinking about splashing on some Obsession for Men, and going to the zoo.

Whistler

Been through the end of the process, the bad trough, but coming back up.

Reminding me of an episode from a much longer story:

It was the early '80's, I had gone home to Cleveland because my father had had a stroke. At the time he was separated but had a girlfriend (not the reason for the separation.) When I arrived at the hospital Dad was flat on his back, with the doctor, me, my stepmother, and the girlfriend standing around the bed. Three of the four at bedside were obviously wondering what their role in this drama was going to be.

Dad was down and aphasic, which means he couldn't talk. Over the many months that followed he never did regain his ability to speak in whole sentences, but it became clear that the brains were still there. I think he wanted us to know this right away - he certainly could see that there was a certain amount of, ah, tension among the onlookers, and he certainly hoped for support. He was bright-eyed and trying to buck us up but without words - this most verbal of men - he was struggling.

So he broke into a whistle. Not aimless - a tune - with his eyes moving to each of us to see if it connected. I'm OK, I'm here, don't give up. I thought I understood, and said yeah Dad, that's good.

As the months went by and the women bailed out, he continued to try to use music to communicate. He could sing better than he could talk. Once, as I explained again the lay of the land as to the ladies, he began to sing "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan." He was a tenor, really a fine tenor.

But the whistle is what sticks with me. Here now, from me, three years younger than he was then: a tune, whistled. I'm here, I'm OK.

Done with That

Radiation is over. Should be a couple of weeks of recovery, then Big C goes back into the rearview mirror and I resume motoring, looking for Margalo.

Apart from the massive machinery, the process involved a bunch of lovely people. Dot, Stefanie, Matt, Jeff, Kimberly, Leni, the always-cheerful Cecelia. They are receptionists, techies, nurses, who see a steady parade of people with cancer. The Siteman Center puts 200 people a day through the type of radiation I just finished, and those folks I named and dozens of others are the guides. Their jobs are not easy, with long hours, in a lower level with no windows. I sometimes think what I do is important, but not really, not compared to them. Ave.

Prayerless

I dined this evening across the table from Jeff, a guy in the tree business. Jeff had a more interesting day than I had. While I did my usual Sunday combo of domestic chores and reading the Times, he was taking a massive Black Locust off the roof of a house, a tree so big that tomorrow he'd have to bring in a 100-foot crane to finish the job. (We'd had a mini-tornado in Webster Groves.)

But even more remarkable than his productive day in a bucket truck was his interest, once he found out my position, in making sure I knew he was going to pray for me. Told me over and over. In fact, as I was leaving and saying good-bye, Jeff grabbed my shoulder and engaged us in prayer right then and there, in the restaurant.

This was the most arresting example of the prayer business that seems to attend almost every expression of sympathy I hear. We are praying for you. Our prayers are with you. I have been hearing this for a year, almost every day, and get me not wrong: I am for it. I am flattered and grateful for the expression and perfectly ready to entertain the notion that it will do good. But - how to say this without sounding churlish? - I am skeptical of the idea.

I'm sure my problem is that I have only the simplest possible appreciation of the process. I understand it thus: you address a petition to God, God hears, God acts. But why does God act? Because of the prayer? Does God not act if there is no prayer? If I were unlucky enough to have no one praying for me, would God ignore me? Who prays for them?

Now I didn't raise this with Jeff. This guy brings down trees for a living, and judging from his build and his callouses he probably does a lot of the work bare-handed. He could strangle me with two fingers, but instead he's calling in the Deity on my behalf. Still, there's a problem. I bow my head as he prays and I thank him, warmly, gratefully. honestly, and... patronizingly. There's a hypocrite in the room. It isn't Jeff.

And I am doing great, and who am I to say that all these expressions of prayer, whose sincerity I do not for a moment doubt, have not made the difference? I can only think of one way to true things up a little. From now on I will pray - me, praying, ha! - for those who otherwise have no one praying for them, and hope for the best for all of us.

Nineteen

Nineteen radiation sessions down, eleven to go. I am fine. Much less impact than before at this stage - don't really know why. Maybe I'm getting used to it. I should be, since if you count the last go-round it's a total of 49 so far.

I also am getting used to it in the commuter/schedule/routine sense of things. I pull off the parkway at the last possible exit, slide into a non-obvious turning lane, roll up into the parking garage, punch in for a ticket, blast ahead of the other guys who are still trying to dope out the machine, go up a couple of ramps and usually am into the same space, a little off the track, you kind of have to know about it. Then walk into the hospital, plugging in the Ipod so I can listen to Fresh Air. Down to the lower level, click in with my bar code card, validate parking, then go back for zillions of electron volts. Ho hum. Another day at the lab.

Maybe that's it. The orderliness. Anyway, an end in sight, and better along the way than expected.

Fool

Further to the last. Dark and ironic are not necessarily something to aspire to, and it's not my first encounter.

About 45 years ago I authored a piece in the Horae Scholasticae, the literary magazine that was published at my New Hampshire boarding school. The Horae and the boarding school are both, at least by American standards, venerable.

The piece was a poem, based in part on a bet. I bet another guy - I'll call him Wisner - that I could get a piece into the Horae. My idea was that if I goosed up the language and staggered the lines and avoided rhyme, but kept it morally upright, they would publish. I showed him the piece. Wisner made the bet because he thought it was a crappy poem, but also because of my creative use of upper case at the beginning of each line, which he did not think would fool the Horae's Editorial Board. It's also possible he did not care if he lost.

I won the bet. Here's what came out in the next issue:

That huge "F" was the Horae's idea.

I was an instant celebrity in that small, fraught world. Although the Editorial Board may have missed the irony, the masters - as we called our teachers then - did not. My English master, a wonderful Brit who loved booze way too much - said, "The last guy who did this was on a train home that afternoon."

The Rector was not amused. An autere Episcopalian bishop, he called me in after consultations to which I was not privy. His offer, rather than to send me home, was to make me stay On Bounds (meaning you couldn't leave the premises) indefinitely, stay over two days into Spring vacation, and pay the republishing costs. I took the deal. It seemed to me, well, ironic that the most severe sanction was banishment, but the next one down was a kind of imprisonment on campus.

The poem was an ironic piece, if also adolescent and crude, and the local literati gave it a mixed review. The chair of the Editorial Board, no doubt miffed, said, "I can't believe you would do something so stupid." Another member of the Board was vague as to whether he had spotted the secret message and pronounced it the finest work ever printed in the Horae. In any event the edition was republished and the poem replaced with a drawing of a flower or a bucket or something. The originals were confiscated and, they say, burned. Except a few.

The poem derived not only from my bet with Wisner. About six months earlier, in the Fall of 1965, my parents had announced that they were separated. It was not really unexpected; my father had fallen rather conspicuously in love with someone else. Home in Ohio that Christmas, I saw him only for a little time, in a rented house. A sad holiday, and even I, the most hardened prep school toughie, came back to school hoping they would wake up and pull it together.

In February, hearing nothing, I called my sister, who was married and lived in Connecticut. I said, "Are my parents divorced?" She said yes. She thought it was terrible they hadn't told me.

I wrote out the poem the next week.

I'm sure I wasn't put on the next train home, and instead was roped to the school, because the Rector knew the history. He felt sorry for me, which I hated. But I did not hate him, and I loved my parents throughout. I was just blind-sided a little, and more careful thereafter.