Good News! And Two Poems....

I was just notified by Lynn Strongin, editor of the upcoming anthology, “Crazed by the Sun,” that I will be appearing along with...many well-known contemporary poets...a former student of mine...a poet acquaintance from LA... and Theodore Roethke, Marianne Moore and e. e. cummings!

I had just gotten a letter from someone about my essay, “My Struggle with Literary Narcissism,” which she enjoyed, especially my musings on how much luck had to do with any success. Then the news of my inclusion with the immortals!

Irony is not dead! Kairos still concentrates experience! Here's to Jungian synchronicity!

I also received a letter from a new paying print venue, The Sigurd Journal, notifying me that my poem, “Dare,” will be featured on the cover and my interview on the back cover.

When it rains it pours! But I'm waiting for #3, since these things usually come in threes. I can't think of what it might be but I won't hold my breath.

*****************************************************

I really need to get on the ball and start submitting my book on Eliot to academic presses on a regular basis. Since coming out of my depression I've been doing what my shrink advised: “Enjoy yourself.” And so I have, posting at various boards, entering debates, spilling my mind and guts where they might prove of interest. But my long-term publishing ambitions always seem to come last, likely for several reasons: First, the bother of print submissions, cover letters, research of markets, yada. Second, the sinking feeling that it is all in vain. Lastly the distraction of whatever my latest project is, whether a poem, and essay, or participation in a discussion at a forum or blog.

I'm alive! I'm alive!” --Baron Harkonnen in David Lynch's “Dune”

*********************************************************

I have remedied the cats' decimation of my flower garden with an ingenious device known as “The Scarecrow,” which by photoelectric activation sprays any moving object within twenty feet of the flowers. Now my flowers are doing much better. Some may remember the poem I scribbled about it, I'll put the latest version below:

Drugstore Flowers

My cats kink and snurl together,
slink effortlessly up the windowsill
and pose, contemptuous of their grace,
as if it were expected,
as if the world held nothing else--
meanwhile destroy my garden,
a two-foot strip around my porch
I dared to punctuate with flowers.
They claw out plugs of hothouse blooms
and leave them baking in the sun;
mainly they trash the marigolds.
Still I re-plant, water and wait,
hoping the roots regenerate
while fearing the trauma's too severe
for drugstore flowers to persevere.

Here's a poem I've been working on, still sort of a draft, one a friend has tried to help me with (I won't mention his name lest he be associated with a bad result).


Reflection

Someday when you were meaning
to look out the window
you will notice your face instead,
a map to the Holy Land
contained in the luggage
of your eyes, spread in lines
from their corners
like shatter-proof glass
resisting shatter.

See mine, beard quilled in white?
The scar of a cop's baton
juts out from my eyebrow
and my mustache was divided
by a brass knuckle's kiss,
a face more public than I wish
though it doesn't take a gypsy
to divine a face; it screams itself.
Mine's not a rich man's face but I hope
rich in love and free of envy.

The rich man rubs it in
whether he wants to or not.
His mere existence powers envy
which powers ambition
which powers achievement
which powers comparison
which powers dissatisfaction
which powers envy again.

It's not the thorn against the rose
but both against the deer--
the deer make them equals
and the sun, confederates.

Still on the blind horde runs
urged on like wasps
disturbed by a lawnmower,
pockets stuffed with lottery tickets.

On the human engine runs
toward the swimming pool
purchased on credit
from a second mortgage
toward the notion
that having all
might cure not having all.

The Buddha smiles
at the ouroboros of desire:
cyclical, predictable.

I smile back at the window.



That's all the good news for today—so far.


2 Kilobunnies,

C. E. Chaffin

Why I have not blogged...

I have not blogged in some time for two reasons:

1) I have not felt the need to blog since my depression went into remission। Remember, I started the blog in Mexico as a way of enduring my trials, having white space in which to order my thoughts about my experience. Later, it became a therapeutic aid to enduring depression, to such a an extent that Kathleen and close friends questioned whether it was actually extending my depression by reinforcement; that, happily, was not true. In writing about my chemical distress I was able to objectify my diseased feelings during the act of writing and thus obtain some temporary relief by means of my blog. The comments were helpful, too. The contact. The affirmation. It was a discipline I practiced in order to hang onto some sort of stated reality, which you suffered with me when I wrote well.

2) I have run into discouraging technical problems and don't know how to fix them. When I post at my blog now, any change at the posting itself results in a translation into an unknown language whose script reminds me of Cambodian, though it is not Cambodian. How such a glitch developed is beyond me.

It has never been about numbers, but since I stopped blogging, visitors have dropped only 25% because of the long tail of references I left behind in former posts, so that searchers looking for a quote from Churchill or details on Freud's vasectomy unwittingly enter my blog space.

Only two close friends questioned why I wasn't blogging; I told them I no longer felt the need. I have contemplated a new blog to rid myself of the present glitches in this one, a blog dedicated to joy as in my last post, a place of hope where there was darkness. If you want to see such a blog, please comment.
Meanwhile I have been gardening, performing music, writing poetry, volunteering as a docent at The Botanical Gardens, leading music therapy at a ministry for the homeless and mentally ill, attending men's groups and debating poetry at various forums, where I defend Eliot again among other things। I've also been nursing Kathleen, who has suffered a gum infection from a botched root canal that also plunged her into a depression. She is a unipolar, I'm a bipolar. That doesn't mean her depression doesn't scare me, but I keep whistling through the graveyard of life. I'm confident enough to support her, as she did me for two years. As for bloviating online, here are links to recent discussions in which I play a primary role: �

Lost in the Shallows,� a discussion of contemporary verse

Defending Eliot at Babilu Forum

Critique thread at Alsop's Gazebo

Recent publications, including YouTube (posted before):

http://web.mac.com/tomkoontz/Site_18/Chaffin.html

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=282

http://www.umbrellajournal.com/spring2008/how_divine/C.E.Chaffin.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozymixtdcfs

http://www.angelfire.com/zine/bluefifth/Winter2008/poems2W08.html


All for now, I fear the quasi-Cambodian interpreting ghost at my typing fingers' heels.


Two Kilobunnies,

CE

Joy

Joy is much harder to capture in words than fear or sorrow। And by joy I do not mean contentment or happiness, but a deeper feeling, echoed in passages like Romans 8:

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time, waiting in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed, for the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God। For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord।” (NIV version, 8:19 ff.)

What is the Kingdom of Heaven but the indescribable joy of inseparable, insuperable eternal love, the very thing we craved from our first banishment from the dumb joy of the womb?

Keats comes closest, in of all places, his “Ode on Melancholy,” where the sorrow-tinged exaltation of which he speaks approaches Joy:

“But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud...
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes।

“She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine।”

Schiller's Ode to Joy, made famous by Beethoven's 9th, falls short of this standard:

Let the cosmos embrace you, you millions!
This kiss goes to the entire world!...
Whoever has had the great fortune
To know true friendship
Whoever has won the love of a devoted wife,
Add his to our jubilation!

(My translation, excerpted from the second stanza।)

This ode, written on the cusp when the Augustan age gave over to the Romantic, still contains more subject-object distance from joy than Keats। As such it may be that only my anachronistic eye fails to feel the joy of this piece, though the music certainly conveys it—music based on a German beer song, incidentally.

Yesterday I was sitting on an old redwood log facing a pasturer where wild turkeys flocked and deer feasted on the long grass। Stellar's Jays, supernaturally blue, hopped and pecked in the grass beside a robin। I listened to the bird song and wind and nothing else। I took my shirt off and lit a hand-rolled cigarette and guiltlessly enjoyed the smoke and the scene, experiencing a richness beyond words। In the distance small whitecaps erupted on the royal blue Pacific। There was nothing I wanted or didn't want, and to illustrate the paucity of words, I can only say I felt like I was in a Disney movieमूवी

This is in part what Eliot meant by “the timeless moment,” that out-of-self experience of all- encompassing joy. When my cigarette was done I wandered out into the pasture, staring at blue-eyed grass and yellow-eyed grass and the lavender and white profusion of wild radishes. A six-point buck pranced away at my approach, his body leaping, his neck proudly erect like a war horse. Joy in his motion, joy in his freedom, joy in his perfection.

It is in our most extreme states that our hearts turns toward the numinous. If we think of God at all, we are most apt to think of him in our deepest sorrow or greatest joy.

There is a great moment in “The Screw Tape Letters” where the protagonist is being oppressed by a demon with a mild depression, and he decides to go for a walk in the country. The beauty of nature transports him out of himself and back into awareness of God.

Afterwards the demon is scolded by his superior: “How could you possibly let the subject do something he enjoyed? You risked him getting out of himself. We want his pleasures circumscribed—the club, television, liquor, not something so dangerous as nature. You fool!”

Exactly. Extreme joy and sorrow are two paths to the same place, another point made in Eliot's “Four Quartets,” though not so directly; in its famous conclusion, sorrow and joy, earthly suffering and isolated moments of transport are fused:

“All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”

**************************************************

An old friend from the LitNet, Seth Abramson, gave me joy by getting three poems into the top print journal, Poetry, something most poets would give their eye teeth for. After all, we don't need them to see।

There's a new thread where I defend Eliot again, a sign of my improved mood, that you might find entertaining, as it begins with the usual charge of anti-Semitism and ends with a बर्डwalk into psychiatry.

I do enjoy comments but it seems that comments are inversely proportional to the length of my posts, so today's is shorter।In destroying my deer netting overnight, the cats' trampling of my little flower garden actually increased. Back to square one.

Although the Lakers lost yesterday they took it to overtime in hostile Utah, so I am still upbeat about their chances।

Next Saturday we plan a housewarming party not only to celebrate our new digs with the expansive ocean view, but to honor Kathleen's birthday, although her beauty is ageless।


Thine in Joy,

CE

Mania, the NBA and Flowers

First I apologize for the inconsistent punctuation and spacing in these last posts, brought on by a need to battle instant translation of everything I type into some unidentifiable Asian script that reminds me of Cambodian। I can't find the glitch yet, but it prevents me from correcting anything on the post page as I go; I can only paste in corrections from elsewhere, and even then the infection puts in a vertical mark resembling '!' without the lower dot and takes a space away, as if to leave an Asian cyberturd behind, as above.

****************************************************************

I had a manic dream last night, something so rare I can't remember the last one। And it's the second night I've had one। I attribute it to taking my second dose of Effexor too late. I need to take it in the afternoon apparently. But just as depressive dreams often warn me of on oncoming depression and have prevented its clinical eruption by such caution, so likewise my body may be warning me of flipping past euthymia into hypomania if not careful.


In the first night's dream I battled an armored dwarf who came after me with a machete'; after I disarmed him, he picked up a battle-ax and assaulted me with increased vigor। Again I disarmed him easily and told him that if that sort of behavior turned him on, I might have to pay attention, but that his aggressions would be better served in some other way. He was crestfallen and felt diminished, though I didn't discount future attacks. I acted as if this sort of thing happened every day and that I was more than competent to deal with murderous dwarfs. Which reminds of the time when, while manic, I kept a police dog (German Shepherd) at bay with one hand, slapping him repeatedly when he tried to leap, keeping the other hand free to smoke, gesture, and reason with an arresting officer. The dog gave up; he realized that I was too quick for him and I don't know how hard I slap when I'm manic; very hard, I expect. I still have scars on my right hand from the occasional tooth.

In last night's dream we were in Mexico (Kathleen and I and her mother and Derek), where I would become enraged at the slightest deviation from my way, to the point of belittling my dear wife and shocking her mother while I ran around a beachside Mexican resort looking for conflict with with anyone from “the dark side।” I can't remember any physical altercations. It's pointless resisting me when in any case I'm manic, whether in a dream or reality. Either calm me down (which has been done by loved ones) or call the authorities.

At the supermarket yesterday late in the afternoon I snapped at Kathleen because I was “houchy” (so hungry I was grouchy), but luckily she didn't hear it। When my blood sugar dips too far I can get like that, in a mini-manic explosion of anger, but I got some Safeway sushi in time to quiet the demon.

This is the Scylla and Charybdis of my disease: in treating a depression you may overshoot into mania, and vice-versa। Yet as an informed consumer, the first logical step is to take my second dose of Effexor earlier; the second is to skip the second dose altogether. In addition I increased my mood-stabilizing agent, Klonopin, to 2 mg. last night, which made me sleep until noon, but I felt it a necessary precaution after two nights of manic dreams.

And yes, poetry has come back to me and I'm enjoying it। I have been posting at three boards and my poem, “Queen Melancholy,” was solicited by an editor. I also had two light verse pieces accepted. And I got a nice rejection from Poetry magazine, which, although a form letter, was one of the nicest form letters I've received. God bless you, Christian! (Unfortunately I had no record of my submitting there, so I can't tell what they rejected. Must have been one of my late at night brandy-drenched sorties into the world of publication that I failed to record.).

Today's question: Will Craig grow manic?

Today's answer: Not if he can help it। (It usually leads to an arrest, and he no like da police, though “he do the police in different voices.”)

I played at a rally Friday against Measure 'B' (to repeal liberal marijuana laws) in Fort Bragg and was well received, though I mistook their “Pot Luck” sign for food, afterward discovering they meant pooling alternative resources and burning them. I played at a Botanical Gardens soirée the week before and was well-received as well. (If I use “well” again in a sentence I shan't be feeling well.) I've been invited by a bass player to play Saturday Night at a local burger joint as well. (Now I'm
sick।)

This brings up another component of my recovery that I neglected to mention in my last post। Though ECT and Invega (an anti-psychotic whose effects on me were similar to the demonic Haldol) made me worse in Jan/Feb of this year, I requested an MRI of my brain while hospitalized and they discovered a bilateral, chronic maxillary sinus infection (everyone in my family seems to have allergies but I never paid them no mind). I remembered a case as a family practitioner where a depressive perked up after I treated her chronic sinus infection, so I went to our family doctor and requested treatment. After a month's antibiotics (the first two weeks spitting up a lot of schmegg), not only was my depression better but my voice had improved markedly. It's timbre and resonance had returned, I was no longer singing through pockets of mucous that robbed me of my natural timbre. So add this to my list of fortuitous concatenation of circumstances in recovery under “physiochemical.”

******************************************************************************
The Lakers won handily last night, another reason for me to rejoice। They are now 6-0 in the playoffs. Only one team that started with such a record in the playoffs has ever failed to win a championship. Yes I know there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, but my beloved Lakers are the best passing team in the league now, displaying oodles of patience to get the best shot while fast-breaking when appropriate. They have no supernatural point (passing, play-making) guard like the Hornets' Chris Paul, but the triangle offense they employ doesn't need one; in it, every player must act as a point guard, a passer, and we are blessed with a number of big men who can pass—Gasol, Odom, Turiaf and Walton (although Walton is really more of a tweener, a swing man). If only Radmonivich could pass we would have five starters who were gifted passers, and good passing has overcome poor rebounding against Utah so far, though I expect them to win a couple of games in predicting a six-game series which the Lakers should win 4-2. If the Lakers sweep I will be surprised.

Meanwhile ugly eastern basketball proceeds, with the wrestling matches of the Celtics vs। the Cavaliers, and the suffocating Detroit defense against the mad three-point shooting Magic। It will likely be Boston and Detroit in the East semifinals and the Lakers and the Hornets in the West, because right now San Antonio, defending champion, seems completely befuddled by Chris Paul, who finished second only to Kobe in the MVP balloting, and based solely on this year's statistics, probably deserved it more.

*******************************************************************

I tried bark in my garden to discourage the cats, as Laurel suggested, but it has been no use। Next I shall try deer netting, and though the aesthetic of draping my porch railing and and flower borders in nylon squares does little for me, my plants will otherwise remain small if at all while the cats keep tramping and the deer keep chomping. The only annual flowers to do well so far are alyssum, which is low to the ground, thus survives trampling, and is apparently not deer-licious. As for perennials, the jasmine and the mints (apple mint, cat mint, mint) and sages (sage and pineapple sage) are doing OK. And to be fair, more of my drugstore (hothouse) flowers have survived than I expected, some clinging to life like the marigolds and petunias, some testing life like the pansies, while some thrive like the alyssum, something I hope for my newly planted sea thrift and lobelia, since they are also essentially ground covers. I should mention that an evil neighborhood cat has torn down whole stems repeatedly from the calla lily just for the fun of it. I caught him in the act. Strange behavior for a cat. Maybe he thinks it's Easter.

On the coast it's cold and windy, so low-lying thick-leaved plants do best। Ice plant would be ideal but since I grew up with it everywhere (in SoCal) I have no intention of planting such a common thing. I'm not a botanical snob but I know what I like, just like Disney: Color! Color! Color! More color than foliage if I can help it. BTW, it's peak rhododendron season out here and a lovely time to visit the Mendocino Coast, just don't move here, please.


How quickly over a thousand words shoot from my fingertips!

Lastly, a new poem:

Fog

It's hard to say whether fog is addition or subtraction
as it leaches color from shore pines, pinus contortus,
painting them slate while the sea's horizon
is lost in indistinction like a chalk line blurred।
All is dulled, dunned, drabbed, sullied
or alternately whitewashed by the bright gray
Flimsier than a negligee, thick as a cataract,
softening all by spell of the sea's breath,
a brume grown opaque as a drop cloth,
it's a lie cast over reality, else a new one
Reach out, rub it between your fingers;
nothing remains but a lick of humidity.

(“brume” = haze)

Kiloneutral but cautious

Thine in Truth and Art

CE

Recovery

I am now in recovery from depression, neither cured not expecting to be It is a chronic disease in my case and it would be unrealistic not to expect another occurrence or two in my remaining lifetime. When I think back on my life, before my diagnosis I suffered 5 major depressions; since I have suffered 3 more. The longest was the recent one, two years, provided I remain in remission. The deepest one was at age 29 when I was finally ushered into treatment.

Thus through age 29 I suffered five major depressions, and since being diagnosed, through age 53, while under treatment, I have suffered three more. This is not statistically significant in terms of prevention, unfortunately, but who knows how much I would have suffered without treatment?Just as alcoholics are in recovery, think of me as a melancholic in in recovery, though this parallel cannot stand much scrutiny, as the latter is more difficult to treat, in my experience.

Now you may rightly ask what concatenation of fortuitous circumstances led to my current recovery. In no particular order:

Spiritual: My friend Eric had a dream about Christ weeping over my body and healing me। About two weeks later, before the new antidepressant had had any effect, I wept in prayer while trying to pray as honestly as I possibly could. For the first time in I don't know how long, I felt some brief, inexplicable connection with the Light, a momentary piercing of the veil, so it seemed.

Chemical: On March 24 my doctor changed my antidepressant again। Within a week we upped it to therapeutic levels. Two-and-a-half weeks later, the usual time frame for response to an antidepressant (2 – 6 weeks), I began to feel a little better. This was on Thursday, April 10, when I was stranded in Lost Hills, CA, with a cracked radiator. Being confronted with a minor crisis was a pleasure in my state, as it got me out of myself. Thanks to a tip about some mechanics who hung around their shop late, we were able to move on the same night. (FGI (for general information) a plastic radiator can't be fixed with “Insta-Weld.” It must be replaced.)

Behavioral and Social: In visiting my daughters and my oldest friend, though cruelly prevented from seeing my grandson, I had a chance to pretend to be myself, to pour myself into the mold of the upbeat, humorous, philosophizing, friendly, garrulous (and sometimes offensive) person I usually am. My second daughter, Keturah, invited me to Happy Hour the next day, April 11, and we had an exotic martini-drinking jamboree/competition at half-price. I was also able to see Sarah perform in a play for only the second time since middle school. And I sat for two hours in an old familiar bar, Joe Jost's, with Eric, talking while trying to avoid any mention of depression. I was so sick of talking about it.

When I returned home I continued to pretend to be myself with dogged courage. There were times when melancholy begged admission, but I refused to discuss my depression। I lied to Kathleen about how I was feeling as a matter of course. I even avoided seeing my psychiatrist because in nearing his office I burst into tears at the memory of all the times I had sat in his office depressed. I told him by e-mail and he understood। This Wednesday I will likely be well enough to see him.

Socially I should also mention that traveling 1200 miles with my stepson, Derek, was a tonic He's funny and upbeat Among other things he taught me the difference between Hip Hop and Gangsta Rap (through a plethora of too-loud examples).

In returning home my volunteer work began to pick up, obligating me to work with others while Iavoiding any mention of my condition. I am now involved with six different volunteer groups, including a musical gig for a group sing with the homeless and mentally ill every Friday.

To sum up, there was Eric's dream and my later prayer; a significant change in medication (I went off two meds and on two others); and the social/behavioral opportunity to be myself, a chance I clung to like a life raft in a flood! Without all three features I do not know if I would have improved, but I consider the change in antidepressants the most important, as without a slight elevation in mood I would not have thought of pretending to be myself. Antidepressants sometimes make you just well enough to get better with other help. And that help comes through doing, not being, as my shrink is fond of saying.

In my next post I hope to create a plan for preventing relapse. Meanwhile I'll re-post my most encouraging poem, many readers' favorite:


Tonic

I will love myself today।
Here are some fuzzy slippers
and a lollipop,
a warm hug and a wet kiss.
Let me tuck this
old familiar blanket
around my shoulders
and read this poem
before I nap.

Whatever I do today,
I’ll approve.
If I spill milk, I’ll clap.
If I button my shirt wrong
it’s a new style.
If I wet my pants
it was on purpose.

My, how well I walk!
How well I speak!
It’s so good to be
good to myself.
Where have I been
all these sad, long years?


Kiloneutral (though ever vigilant),

Craig Erick

Moderation

Due to posts either non-germaine or merely self-promoting, I have resorted to the moderation option on this blog। That's a kind noun for deleting interlopers.

I started this blog in the late summer of 2005 and continued it through our trials in Mexico and my subsequent two-year depression. That some would come here not in good faith but only to scribble graffiti saddens me.

At The Melic Review Roundtable poetry board we had about seven good years before the barbarians stormed the gates. I had a policy that adults should be able to ignore the posts of brigands bent on stealing the spirit of communal discourse without policing. Alas, at last, I was proved wrong--and as we switched to censorship the board simply collapsed, after which I put the whole enterprise on hold.

Right now I'm open to editing and publishing again, I'm even toying with the idea of starting a new magazine or resurrecting the old one. (Cyanide capsules may be mailed to my snail address.) Seriously, I know some untapped talent I suspect would make for a riveting magazine, my only impediment being the lack of a literary light also schooled in webmastering who might be willing to devote her gifts to the technical side. Any volunteers should e-mail me and I will try to provide some monetary reward as well, though likely not commensurate with the current commercial market.

Meanwhile my mood is holding, with a few dips, at least stable enough to write about melancholy not in the first person, a poem presently being workshopped at Gazebo and Wild Poetry Forum (at their Biofeedback thread), should you wish to visit the workshop process. I post the poem here for your convenience:


Queen Melancholy

Dressed in perpetual blue,
her smile a wound too wise
for ordinary martyrdom,
with the stealth of a blue-bottle fly
she moves, black-veined wings
pressed on an azure gown.
Though her kiss is bitter
as the almond pit, her name
flows over the tongue
like maple syrup.

“All happens for a reason”
she reassures us
in a smoky cocktail voice,
rendering unreasonable pain
immune to reason's solace.
She will choke you
with a noose of accusations
woven from strictest honesty.
Beware her lying bed.
Great minds have languished there
and dined upon themselves.

My thanks to all who have followed my journey and apologies for delaying the publication of your comments. There is no other apt word for what I am being forced to do than censorship, which I detest. I hope the result will not be as discouraging as the downfall of the Melic poetry board.

Thine,

CE

New Poems with Self-Critique!

I have not been blogging because my involvement in actual life has increased, aided by the NBA playoffs, in which my Lakers have gone up 3-0 against Denver. I hope there's no letdown for the fourth game.

Meanwhile I will not blog about my slightly improved mood without at least a month behind me.

I can't recall which of my recent poems I posted here and which I didn't and in what form. So consider this a redux of recent works in a more polished (though never finished) form.

*********************

Not much of a blog, was it? Today, April 28, is another day. And I'm hungover and bloated from gorging Thai food and drink for the first time in years.

My chief literary correspondent and critic (next to Kathleen) sent me some illuminating critique about my poetry, and to simplify, argued that I needed more passion, as if my intellect were a nail in the tire of emotion. I concur.

I had my poetry labeled "inhuman" long ago at a certain forum. Part of this defect is my deplorable tendency to over-revise many poems, squeezing the juice out of them on the way to "perfection." I've probably ruined more poems than I've helped.

I can't help it--it's searching for the Logos through logos--the ineluctably indomitable, the predictably unavoidable, the kairos moment when time stops and you hold experience in your hand like a baseball.

Squeeze the seams!


Just say "No" to Kilorats,

CE


****************

Dare

Because I doubt my being
I drape you in words
like papier mache'
that when you withdraw
I have a hollow to inhabit.

Everyone is Jesus to me,
everyone who leaves
a space to occupy.

Notice how many hollows
letters contain
and the spaces
between words:

Dare you to find me!




Too Many Voices

I've lost myself.
Some mad imposter
puts on airs,
practices smiles,
greets my mailman,
pages through
yearbooks and journals
seeking my erasure.

The angels, in particular
the obese ones
dedicated to pleasure,
laugh, it is their job.
If I could laugh
I might remember.

In my dream
I lead the sheep to safety
only to discover
at last, the joke:
They are all
wearing my face.

Each time I wake
I lose another piece of me.
Out of charity
I embrace what's left.
There was too much
of me anyway,
too many voices, a chorus
of purloined identities.




Valentine 2008

You are a granite waterfall, my love.
Your stone is slippery and sensuous.

I fall into a pool beneath your feet
And lie upon a thousand polished stones.

I look up at the alders overhead
And marvel at how you give yourself to them

Without diminishment, without attrition,
A steady miracle of sacrifice.

Downstream trout fingerlings mouth bits of algae
Because your pounding fed them oxygen.

The vines that weave the cliffs live off your spray.
Bright orange salamanders make their bed there.

A pale succulent grows in your cleft,
Its purple stalk a wand of yellow stars.

Inside the moss-lipped haven of your granite
I hide behind your thundering skirt of water.

Your clarity dissolves all self-deception.
I would not recognize myself without you.

The shelter of trees is never so generous
As your pouring and thinning of yourself

Into the forest air. I kneel and drink
And like the alder rise up satisfied.

Feeling a Little Bit Better; Poetry and Power Lyrics

I haven't blogged in four days and the universe hasn't shifted. My mood has improved up to the point where blogging seems like some kind of external burden instead of a welcome distraction. My operative secret has been pretending to be myself.

Strange how a change in mood changes one's valuation of things; let ethicists debate that.

And they have. The Marquis de Sade: “Everything that is is good.”

Anon: “Happiness is a side effect of right behavior.”

And:

“I don't feel like going out tonight, honey.”

“We need to talk.”

“Not again!”

It's like being a low rent jeweler, stringing these cliche's together into a necklace of tears. Still you see the mood determination factor. Kennedy met with Khrushchev after morphine injections for his back. Jack the Junkie, as history fondly recalls him. How did this affect Berlin, I wonder?

And his wife! Model pretty and model thin. Too bad he preferred the upholstered couches.

I wrote a decent poem in the last year, so I was told by twenty comments at a poetry forum recently, the Gazebo. You want to see it?


Among Schoolchildren

A old man in a brown cardigan
walks a black Chow
on a chain leash
beside a fence
where children throng and
in a supplication of small fingers
reach through galvanized
diamonds of steel,
each clamoring for a touch,
the soft substantial feel
of mammalian welcome:
trusting, dependent fur.

How many would trade
the fence for the leash?


I dedicate this poem to my old friend, poet John Benson, whom I spoke with last night for the first time in years and who is thinking of starting a blog. Tell him “Yes!” One of the brightest and funniest men I've ever known. His son, David Benson, is a poet as well.

I thought of a couple aphorisms:

It is hard to create a literature that captures its time and outlives it.

Great poetry communicates an involuntary experience.

As to the second aphorism above, I'm talking about the book you can't put down, the movie you can't walk out of, the poem that, once you begin it, there's no turning back; you're hooked.

Poetry ought to be that pleasurable. Poetry ought to make that kind of impression. To do that today poetry must strive to be open and concise, colloquial and precise, syntactic and musical, but most of all experientially epigrammatic—a shot of indelible snapshots to shoot up in words.

I have previously written about Logopoetry and Power Lyrics if essays interest you. My point is simple; either we accept that the audience for poetry will continue to dwindle to irrelevant proportions while we experiment and re-invent the wheel, or we fashion a poetry muscular enough, compressed enough, compelling enough to command attention from the multitasking modern mind. (I take some comfort from the Swedes' Retrogardism.)

Here's another of mine that wants to be a power lyric:


About the Bracelet

You sent me a silver bracelet.
"Damn I'm good," it said. I found it
heavy and constricting, painful
in its alien density. (I was forgetting
my body again, how any restriction
burns like handcuffs, even a watchband,
but you know this.) So I hung it
from my key chain. I like the heft
of it there, I like to stretch
my knuckles against its links and feel
the ache of constant use relax.

What if all the righteous faded
by subtle increments to stark transparency
until no one could see them but themselves?
Left to our sordid board games,
would we even notice their absence?
In this scenario you'd have disappeared
before we met. I'm so glad I see you!
And this bracelet, whether it
rings my wrist or jabbers with the keys,
proves you see me, too!

You saw the poor boy in the rich man's house.
You clothed him in your sea-green light.
You kissed him with your coral lips,
sucked poison from his stonefish heart
and smoothed the ragged seaweed
from his brow with patient fingers, saying,
"You are loved, little boy, you are loved."


This one is likely too dense for a power lyric. A power lyric should be more direct, I think, require less of the reader. Here:


Epistemology

I.

Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:
But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.

II.

We milk the cow of the world, and as we do
We whisper in her ear, 'You are not true.'

--Richard Wilbur


Perhaps that one is too riddle-like but I love it.

That first poem of mine ended in sort of a riddle. Hmm...

Here's another poem that approaches my ideal:


The Heaven of Animals

Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains it is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.

For some of these, it could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle's center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.

-- James Dickey


My aforementioned poet friend contemplating a blog, John Benson, turned me on to this poem.

Wordsworth, go fish.

It is silly to put my own work on the same page as Dickey or Wilbur, but in the blogosphere of the cyberuniverse it is perfectly acceptable. I am content if any of these show, however enanescently, how poetry can not only matter but actually attract more readers

Obviously my mood has improved, as I said at the outset, though I do not put my faith in this appearance yet. Thanks to all of you for your encouragement, faithfulness and patience during these last two years. I am not saying it is over; if it holds I may blog about it.

Thine,

Craig Erick

Pretending; Norm's Triumph; Botanical Gardens; Poem

This morning I had a dream where I sought to thread three wires, one large and two smaller, through various entry points on my body to places far distant. For example, I opened up both shoulders and threaded the wires down through my abdomen and legs to my feet. The procedure burned. There were many insertions. At the end I was slumped over and I could feel the too-tight pulling of the wires from my shoulders to my feet, causing me to slump over. I was naked. As I walked forward the wires bent my head forward. With my hands clasped before me I looked like Jesus or a convict. I remember being surprised at how easy the wires were to thread, marveling at my skill in discovering the surgical "empty space" all through the body.

The wires reminded me of the new cable wires I plug into my laptop now that I have high-speed Internet at home. The feeling I had during the procedure was one of a necessary torturer; I was not enthused at the procedure but it was something I had to do. I was slightly embarrassed at being so pitiful a spectacle but I kept my head down.

At one point I think Kathleen discovered, or was about to discover, my high-tech flagellations, which would of course have resulted in a scolding and pleading to remove the wires.

The dream can be taken many ways. I'm a slave of the Internet. My depression is actually some strange form of penance I inflict on myself. I miss doctoring. I see myself as a suffering figure, although this suffering was self-inflicted. Nevertheless it required my hard-earned expertise to thread the wires properly.

This is a revised post. Amazing that LKD suggested below suggested three daughters being the three wires, the largest, of course, being Rachel. Who died July 29, 2007.

Mostly in the dream I felt resigned, "like a lamb led to slaughter." A dutiful sacrifice. That's the feeling tone, often the most important aspect of a dream.

Does anyone get up in the morning and sing and proclaim "How Great Thou Art" and revel in morning toiletries with plenty of time to make it to work? Who are these happy, positive-thinking people, and why don't I meet more of them? I think they are rare, and besides, what happy soul would want their buzz diminished by Eeyor? Perhaps they are rare and they avoid me.

I want to be that happy person. For years my ambition has been, my the grace of God, to cheer others up, to be a disciple of joy--in contrast to my sinful nature that tends toward the melancholic. This would be a miracle and in keeping with God's strategy; he made the greatest persecutor of early Christians, Paul, into their greatest apologist. Although Moses stuttered badly, he made Moses his mouthpiece. It's God's way in the Bible to use his servanults in a capacity for which their natural inclinations are ill-suited, so that the power comes from God. One aspect of grace. Remember I'm a Lutheran when I posit this strangities.

I supposed the years in my life where I brought joy, or at least entertainment, to others, likely exceed my depressive years. But time passes quickly when you're having fun and depression drags on forever, so subjectively it seems the other way around.

Nevertheless I am committed to pretending to be myself. Even my stepson found me verbally irritating yesterday, a good sign. People don't expect me to be quiet; for whatever reason they want me to talk. When I'm depressed I try to avoid talking, naturally. In my present pretense I actually initiate conversations.

And here's a conundrum, easily explained. When I went to my shrink's office yesterday I became progressively more sad, to the point of tears, until I saw the sign on his office door proclaiming that he was ill, which I received with relief. Because the one place I allow myself to weep is behind his door, behaviorally I am already being programmed to weep because of the repeated nature of the experience, just like Pavlov's dogs drooling to the bell. This makes me suspect that in my condition, if you see your psychiatrist too often and let yourself ventilate there, it could impede your progress. Should I tell him he's making me worse?

What makes me better, however briefly, are challenges in the real world. I bought four nearly new tires and had them installed yesterday for a total of $160. That intervention seemed to do me more good than all the medications I take. And yesterday, in a good prognostic sign, I forgot all my medications in the morning. That only happens when you're not thinking about your illness.

Tomorrow I play guitar and sing for "Heart to Heart" in the afternoon, a ministry to the homeless and mentally ill; tomorrow night I serenade the browsers at our Botanical Gardens members' spring plant sale. My fingers should be raw after all that; just hope I don't lose my voice in the evening. I gave Beverly Sills' old voice coach a call but he wouldn't speak to me.

I planted four kinds of heather and a flowering maple in the garden yesterday, hoping they are large enough that the cats won't dig them up.

The James Sisters did bring me a vole this morning, but luckily I had the sliding glass door closed so they couldn't bring it into the house to play. I rewarded Topaz, today's hunter, with a treat, then mystified both of them by tossing the dead vole over the fence into a gully where they will never retrieve it. Kathleen said such inconsistency could screw them up. I said she ought to know. At least a vole is better than the potato bug ("Jerusalem Cricket") they played with in the bathroom yesterday. Since childhood potato bugs are one of the few creatures that cause me a visceral revulsion.

Our friend, Norm Ball, made the top thirty in a recent sonnet contest through Garrison Keillor; the winner was chosen randomly from that group, but at the site you can scroll down and see Norm's poem, listed sixth.

Way to go, Norm! I plan ride your coattails until they rip. Here's the link for "Thornery."

On Tuesday's hike along the coast after work, Kathleen and I saw four whales and some beautiful woodpeckers whose underside wings flashed orange.

When Kathleen was late coming home from work yesterday, I, slightly enhanced, rigged up my Stratocaster and Fender Twin Reverb so I could play it on the front porch. Strangely, it didn't spook the deer. I can't say if they enjoyed it, but playing to the beautiful coast certainly made my musical interpretations much mellower.

I'm leaving now for a refresher tour at the Botanical Gardens, a great place to visit, as I'm a docent who leads tours there as a volunteer. So far my experience has been that the people I've taken on tours were rarely interested in the plants, more often in taking pictures of each other and finding plants they had in their own gardens. I guess my chief function is to keep them from being lost. One tour of old folks I dubbed "the bench tour," since their chief interest was to find the next bench to sit on before we moved on. We never left the front of the garden; there weren't enough benches to go deeper into the gardens.

With that I'll wrap up today's post. Here's another new poem of questionable merit. I was glad Cynthia liked the last one.


Fallacy

You think you're so
goddamned important
as if your being late for work
might undermine
the basic laws of physics,
but when you behold
the flowering apple tree
on the bluff above the lighthouse
you must know you are
neither light nor lighthouse,
just a small figure on a Chinese lantern.

Beyond the headlands
the sun falls through
the low wall of clouds
and gilds the ocean silver
in a blinding horizon of sea.
You could go blind staring at that.
You see the fallacy of your importance?
Try to arrange yourself
at the beginning again
by the flowering apple tree
where your only contribution
was/is assent.


Thine in Truth and Art,

C. E. Chaffin

Cats and Flowers and a Trip South

As expected, traffic has decreased during the posting of my long short story.

Yes, I enjoy oxymorons. And no, I don't post just to increase traffic.

If anyone finished the story and has an impression or criticism to share, please do so!

I had a discussion with a friend recently who felt that Bob Dylan's obscurity was intentional and a smart marketing tool. I replied by saying I thought Bob did what he wanted, damn the publicity.

Am I that free? No, I still care what others think, probably more in my present state than usual. Admittedly it's a form of slavery, but it's also a big part of the social glue that keeps us from murdering each other.

Meanwhile I have returned from SoCal and my daughters and friends, though I was not allowed to see my grandson by his father (who never married my daughter but was happy to exploit her and vice-versa,). I was so pissed I didn't feel youknowwhat briefly.

I also indulged in a martini competition during happy hour with my oldest surviving daughter, the schoolteacher. She said, "Happy Hour was designed for teachers. Who else gets off by 4 PM?" And here I never knew all the barflies were into education!

Anyway, I learned something. Martinis are not confined to vodka or gin, vermouth, lemon, olives and onions--as long as you put the mixed drink in a martini glass, it's called a martini. Several I sampled were like drinking candy--"Georgia Peach" (in honor of The Masters), "The Gobstopper," "Hawaiian Sunset," "Miami Ice," "Ruby Red," and "Black Orchid" were a few I sampled.

Keturah said "Gobstopper" and "Black Orchid" "taste just like Jolly Rancher candies!" Indeed. Bartenders are way ahead of the new flood of cannabis candies.

(For all you Hillary fans who want to take away my freedoms and impose your protection on me, as in whether I can play lawn darts or drink creek water, be it known that we were on foot and also capable of walking afterwards.)

************************************************

I did well this weekend by pretending. Seeing my daughters and my oldest friend made it easier to pretend to be myself (entertaining, irreverent and unconventional, sometimes verbally offensive). I fit into the mold pretty well and only came close to tears once. All I ask of others is that they not inquire into how I'm feeling. Don't wanna go there.

One patient of mine used to answer the question as follows: "With my fingers."

I have a couple of new poems of questionable value. Then isn't all poetry of questionable value? Auden said, "Poetry changes nothing."

Memory-wise, I'm still recovering from ECT. Little lacunae, like "Who starred in that movie?" are slowly being filled with information. It's still a harrowing process; as you remember one thing you wonder what other things you have failed to remember (how much of our memory dwells on trivia is philosophically discouraging; we are a concrete race).

Here's a poem that undertakes two common subjects:


Drugstore Flowers

My cats kink and snurl together,
slink effortlessly up the windowsill
and pose, contemptuous of their grace,
as if it were expected,
as if the world held nothing else--
meanwhile destroy my garden,
a two-foot strip around my porch
I dared to punctuate with flowers.
They claw out plugs of drugstore blooms
and leave them baking in the sun.
Mainly they trash the marigolds.
Still I re-plant, water and wait,
hoping the roots regenerate
yet suspect the trauma too severe
for drugstore flowers to persevere.


At first the closing four lines were pentameter, but I converted them to tetrameter, in accord with most of the unrhymed portion of the poem.

Citrus oil, coffee grounds and half-full plastic jugs of water have been advised as cat repellents. They didn't mind the orange peels and sniffed out the coffee grounds with glee. I have only the jugs left to try. But why did they bite off my geranium blooms? Damn cats. Or is it a potato bug, also known as "The Jerusalem Cricket?" The cats killed one today.

Cats and flowers don't mix.

At least the alyssum survive.

Tax day today! Don't forget to contribute to our effort in Iraq!


Did I pass the audition?

CE

"Positively Bud": the last 2728 words

I'm undertaking a trip tomorrow to visit my grandson and see my daughter Sarah in her first Shakespearean performance. Not knowing what my computer access will be, I'm posting the conclusion to "Positively Bud."

I hope this was a fun read for those who stuck with it. I am not a natural fiction writer; my fiction tends to be one of ideas. I am not skilled enough to make an audience weep. If I allowed myself an ambition in fiction it would be to provoke debate.


*******************************************************

"Honey, I am positively no longer the Bud you knew before my transformation, but I am still positively for this relationship and quite willing to be your husband if you'll have me."

His Howdy Doody grin made her shudder. Should she call one of those de-programming agencies for cult victims? The light in his eyes was too shallow, that was it-- "Happy shiny people holding hands." Shallow light, superficial, as if he'd had a darkectomy. It wasn't human, it wasn't right. How to expose . . .

"OK, Bud, let me ask you this: Do you want to make love?"

"Oh yes, with all my heart!"

"See ya in the bedroom in five minutes."

She stood up in her white terrycloth robe and walked past Bud to the bathroom down the dark hall. The mirror exposed her years and the wine was no help. She looked bloated and wrinkled, an old lady. Practically speaking it was hard to find a new partner at her age, though her income would help. Still her tired body would know for sure. In bed she would know if Bud was still her husband or some golem of Robert Schuler.

Martha had trouble explaining it to Dorothy the following day in the hospital lunchroom.

"He wasn't Bud; he was more adept but less affectionate; he didn't even seem to care if he had an orgasm. He was-- efficient, I had mine; but he was not there-- not that he was a puppet, mind you, but he was so intent on the task and my pleasure that I felt more serviced than anything. I didn't feel special; I didn't feel like his wife, you know?"

"But isn't that better than not getting any?" Dorothy said, laughing. "C'mon, girl, we're not so young anymore. So he's changed; so what. At least he's not that vegetable you described."

"But that vegetable was Bud, I'm sure, and this man is not-- not Bud, I mean. He's a stranger, somebody Bud never was. Bud was a bit of a clumsy lover, but always affectionate. I don't know what to do."

"Why don't you sit back and enjoy it? No doubt he'll return to work soon and your income should improve. What do you care if he's changed?"

"As sick as he was, I loved Bud. I do not love this man. I do not know this man. I cannot live with this man."

"Have it your way, honey, but I think you're making a big mistake. Think of it as a second marriage, something-- don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

"Sorry, Dorothy, there is no baby-- only this thing, this sickeningly optimistic Howdy Doody-- it's like there's no depth-- no darkness-- no contrast in him; he's all light, but it's shallow."

Dorothy leaned back in her chair, pushed her tray forward. "Honey, you gotta do what you gotta do, but there's a lot of women your age who might just fancy your Howdy Doody over an empty bed."

"You're right in general, but you're wrong in my case. I am a wife, not a statistic. And the man that came out of that brainwashing clinic is not my husband. I'm going to ask him to leave."

"Whatever, Martha, you do what you have to do but you may regret it later. Then we can bitch about it, as always."

"Yeah, as always."

"As always."

"See you on the cardiac floor."

Returning from work that evening she found the house sparkling, Bud in an apron whistling.

"Hi, honey!" he chirped and pecked her cheek. "Let me take your things." He placed her purse and coat on the rack. "Can I fix you a drink?" She nodded. He produced a tray with two gimlets and they sat down on the couch together. "So how was your day?"

"The usual," Martha said. Maybe she could get used to this. No.

"Tell me about the usual," Bud said.

"As if you've never heard it!"

"Tell me again."

She weighed the temptation, knew his responses would be marvelously therapeutic and supportive, saw the long years with this phantom stretch out in a shallow stream, weakly lit, and something in her clunked, like an engine throwing a rod. Something inside her simply ground to a halt. There was no going on; there was no going back. "Look, Bud," she began.

"Yes?"

"I want you to move out."

"But why, Martha, what have I done?"

"It's nothing you've done, it's what you haven't done. You haven't given me any indication that you're still human, subject to grief like the rest of us. Every day my work brings me into contact with people in pain, and you would make it into a clown show. It's not a clown show. It's life. Part of you is gone, whatever it is that can admit to suffering. I don't want you like this. If you ever come back to your senses, I'll reconsider. As it is, my decision is final; I want you out by tomorrow. You can take what you need from the savings to get yourself a place until you find a job; you can write but don't call." Tears came, but as Bud went to wipe them she pushed his hand away. "No! I won't have it!" She got up, tossed down her drink, and went straight to the bedroom.

Shortly Bud knocked on the door: "But honey, don't you want to taste my fresh trout almondine?"

"No," Martha said, "but you can bring me another gimlet."

"Right away!" said Bud.

Bud packed up the next morning, whistling show tunes he had remembered only vaguely prior to his rejuvenation. He took their second car, an old Buick station wagon, and checked into a residential hotel. A job as an engineer would not be easy to come by in a short time, so he scanned the want ads for the first available pay check. "Make thousands a month through phone sales" seemed to be the easiest chance. After interviewing, he began his work in a cubicle with an automatic dialer, trying to sell subscriptions to the L.A. Times. As he had been taught, he put his whole self into every appeal, sympathizing with each potential buyer at length about whatever troubled them, dispensing positive thinking tips when he could. After a week his supervisor came to him and asked him what method he was using.

"Method?" Bud said, laughing. "I don't have any method; my wife, in fact, thinks I am mad, so perhaps there is a method to my madness?"

"I'm just curious," his supervisor said, "as you tripled the subscription rate of any other salesperson."

"Really?"

"Really. If this continues, perhaps you might be willing to share your technique?"

"As I said, I have no technique. I try to be a good listener; I point out all the positive things the Times has to offer, even schedules for twelve-step meetings and the like, recipes for housewives, fishing tips. I do spend a little more time with each customer, I suppose, trying to make their subscription a positive step in their lifestyle, that's about it."

"Hmmm. . . . if you say so. But I'm keeping my eye on you, Bud; and keep up the good work!

Several weeks later, as Bud's sterling sales record continued, his supervisor got a call from a local radio talk show that sought to feature phone sales as an issue, and he was asked if he had any representatives to suggest for the debate. He suggested Bud, who soon found himself behind a microphone for the first time in his life.

"Many of you out there consider phone sales an invasion of privacy," the host began, "and I don't blame you. Today we have with us several successful phone sales people here to defend the practice: Bud Rose from the L.A. Times, Dick Kerr from Steam Dream Carpet Cleaning, and Jeff Wilton from Verizon, which may be the ultimate indignity: selling phone service by phone solicitation. Gentleman, what do you say to the charges that all phone solicitation should be made illegal, that it is a fundamental invasion of privacy?"

Mr. Kerr waxed eloquent about first amendment rights while Mr. Milton explained that phone blocking and unlisted numbers were available for any who wished to protect themselves. It was Bud's turn. The talk show host motioned to the microphone and said, "Mr. Rose, what's your take?" Bud laughed.

"Take? It's a good take! I make good money from it. And there are a lot of lonely people out there who would spend hours on the phone with me if they could. I do get the occasional hang-up, but more often than not I become engaged with the person, and after they have unburdened themselves to me I promote all the wonderful things the Times has to offer-- it has to be the best paper in the world for twenty-five cents, it has something for everybody! The movie reviews alone can prevent a person from wasting eight bucks at a theater, which would buy a month's worth of the paper at our discounted delivery rate. We use recycled paper and I personally urge all new subscribers to recycle as well. We're environmentally friendly and full of useful information on everything from romance to the latest in scientific discoveries. I ask myself, "How can one afford not to subscribe?" Television news is shallow and misleading and all the channels are the same; with the Times the reader has complete control over what to read or not to read; and you can always wrap fish in it if nothing else, or use it to protect your table during art projects, like pumpkin carving, or . . ."

"Yes, yes, I can see you are an effective salesman, Mr. Rose (by the way, I already subscribe), but don't you think ringing up perfect strangers for the sole purpose of selling a product an invasion of privacy? First caller, on a cell phone from Reseda-- for you, Mr. Rose:"

"Hi, my name is Jack, and I want to ask Mr. Rose how he can possibly justify his annoyance of people at home with his sales drivel. It's disgusting."

"Bud?"

"Oh, I totally agree. It is annoying if the customer isn't interested, but it's rare I get into a conversation where the customer isn't. Where do you get your news, by the way, if I may ask?"

"From the internet."

"And that costs about twenty bucks a month for the hook-up, right?"

"Something like that."

"For half the cost you can get something real in your hands to peruse; isn't that a good deal?

And you can read it in bed, or in a coffee shop, or wherever you please-- you don't have to sit stiffly in front of a screen to get your news, and you can always save articles without the cost of printing them out. Have you ever thought about the advantages?"

"Sorry, Bud, we seem to have lost that caller. Now it's Violet from Inglewood:"

"I just wanted to say that Mr. Rose called me, and I'm a shut-in, and he cheered me up so much that I just had to subscribe. God bless the man! He's a gem!"

"Well, well," the host said, "what kind of magic is this? You planted callers, Mr. Rose?"

"Gee, I wish I were that smart. No, I didn't. I remember Violet, and how her grandchild was suffering with those horrible leukemia treatments; how's she doing?"

"Sorry, Bud, she's been cut off. But how do you remember such things after all the calls you make in a day?"

"It's my job to remember such things. I may be a salesman but I'm a human being first, and if there's any way I can bring a little sunshine into someone's life in the course of my job, by God I'm going to do it, hang the profit. The world is full of lonely people being made even more fearful by the constant siren of the media telling us how dangerous it is out there-- don't eat, don't touch, don't, don't, don't, it never ends . . . I want to say life is beautiful, it's a privilege, every breath is a gift, selling a subscription is just an excuse for me to reach out and make someone's day."

"Sheesh, you sound more like a minister than a salesman."

"You mean there's a difference?" The host laughed.

Not long after the show Bud got a call from the radio show director. "Can you come in and talk?" he said.

"Sure," Bud said.

After an hour alone with Bud the director was convinced he had a talk show host in the making, hang the experience. He offered him a slot at 3 AM each morning for two hours, would he take it? Of course. After a month, due to unexpectedly high ratings, his slot was moved to 9PM. Before long he had secured the coveted drive-time slot of 6 to 9 AM. Though he had not spoken to Martha in two months, he had written her many encouraging letters, never receiving a reply. One morning Martha was fiddling with her AM dial when she recognized his voice. She couldn't believe it.

"Hi, this is Bud Rose. Welcome to another glorious day in this incredible world. Now I want all of you to repeat my mantra for the day, are you ready? 'I feel terrific. I love myself. Life's a wonderful adventure and I'm lucky to have a ticket!' So all you out there down-in-the-dumpsters, you hangdog Harrys and low-esteem Lucys, get ready for three hours of absolutely life-changing, positive talk! I am here to rock you out of the doldrums of doubt, shock you out of the rut of depression, talk you into the love of life and light."

Martha shook her head in disbelief. Her boring engineer of a husband, now a radio celebrity? God, how ironic was that? Was she wrong to kick him out? Did she put too much stock in empathy? No! It wasn't right. That recycled pablum from Norman Vincent Peale was enough to make any insightful person barf. She listened to the next caller.

"Hello, Bud?"

"That's me!"

"Oh God, I'm so excited to talk to you! I can't wait to tell my friends!"

"Just as I'm excited to talk to you. So what's up?"

"I'm up! After what you said to me yesterday, I feel as if my life has taken a whole new turn. Bud, you are the best!"

"Not! I'm the worst! The worst! I'm simply in recovery from wrong thinking, and I'm happy I was able to share a bit of the cure with you. Our next caller is Tom, from Downey:"

"Yeah, Mr. Rose?"

"Call me Bud."

"OK, Bud. . . . I've got this problem, you see."

"Go ahead."

"My wife will only make love to me once a week."

"Really?"

"Yes, and I'm in my twenties, and it's just not enough."

"Only because you make it that way, my man."

"Huh?"

"Most single men would be happy to get laid once a week, and here you are complaining about it. The thing to do is maximize the pleasure of that evening, shower your wife with candlelight and roses, pleasure her any way she wants, be totally unselfish, and you will find your frequency may increase. Even if it doesn't, try to put the desire of a whole week into that one night-- and never complain, thank her for being such a good lover, pretend you are courting her every day, treat her like a goddess, and you'll be surprised at how quickly she turns around, or turns over, or assumes your favorite position, as the case may be."

"You're sure?"

"Absolutement. Our next caller is. . . ."

Martha turned the radio off. Adjusting the rear view mirror momentarily, she looked at her worry lines. Absent-mindedly she found herself digging in her purse for the crumpled brochure from The Institute for Positive Living. She fingered it pensively as she pulled into the hospital, ready for another day-- good, bad or indifferent--then angrily stuffed it in the trash as the sliding glass doors parted, welcoming her to the world of white tiles and fluorescent light.

Bud Part 13: Bud and Martha after the Party

No commentary today. Two or three more days and we'll be done with the story.

********************************************************

"Great party!" Bud said. Shall I do the dishes?"

"Sure, go ahead," Martha said. "But you don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?"

"How you insulted our guests."

Bud looked puzzled. "I didn't mean to insult anybody-- I just tried to promote a more positive outlook on some of their problems."

"But can't that be done with some tact?"

"Tact is often a code word to permit commiseration with the miserable," Bud said.

"Is that a saying from the Institute?"

"Yes, and a very useful one I might add. I would rather be tactlessly positive than tactfully negative."

"Have it your way, then," Martha conceded. "But you won't end up with many friends."

"I prefer to think of it this way: I won't end up with many negative friends, and who needs them anyway?"

"Does that include me?"

"That's up to you. I have no intention of leaving, but if you can't stand me I wouldn't blame you if you did."

"Great," Martha said, "I put up with a depressed zombie for a over a year and after one month's treatment I'm too negative for him! Don't I get any credit?"

"Well, not really, dear. I know you did the best you could, but due to your ignorance you were mainly an accessory to my depression. You coddled me too much. You acted as if I couldn't help it. And in doing so, though well-meaning, you helped me stay there."

"That's it!" yelled Martha. "I want you out of here tomorrow, you-- you ungrateful bastard! I was the one that got you to that institute in the first place-- I should have just let you rot in your chair!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way, but it's understandable. Perhaps when you've had some time to think about it you'll reconsider. Otherwise I'll be happy to move out."

Bud slept on the couch that night, dreaming of oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar. Martha sat on her bed with her reading lamp on, sipping cheap Merlot. She couldn't concentrate on William Styron's Darkness Visible, a book her friend had recommended as a means to understanding Bud's depression. Tears welled in her eyes; occasionally she rubbed any sign of betrayal away. Twenty years of marriage had come to this: Bud was brainwashed and now she, compassionate nurse and long-suffering wife, was the enemy. The enemy, the naysayer, the emotional ankle weight. How did Mrs. Norman Vincent Peale get by? The thought almost made her laugh. The Merlot burned a little.

On the wall hung their wedding picture; she remembered when Bud was Bud; he wasn't a whiner, but he used to complain often enough to be human. And now? Now he was Dr. Pangloss on steroids! Would his enthusiasm pass? Should she forgive him and wait for the programming to wear off? Surely there must be means to a compromise; the new Bud was better than Bud depressed, but not by much. His optimism made her feel . . . guilty, as if her least complaint were a mortal sin. And how much thanks had he given her? She turned off her reading lamp and rolled over.

She woke to the smell of bacon frying. Fresh flowers were on the dining table. Bud was cooking and humming to himself.

"How are you today, my love?" he asked.

"A little hungover," she said.

"Over easy?"

"Yes."

She filled her coffee mug and went to the dining table, began scanning the paper. Advertisements were everywhere, promising a new life, a new hairline, a larger penis, less cellulite, improved energy. America seemed a giant drugstore, a tonic salesman barking from the back of his horse-driven wagon filled with miracle cures. Bud slid her breakfast beside her and kissed her on the cheek. She began eating mechanically, afraid to make eye contact. He waited quietly until she finished. She didn't have to work today. He took her empty plate, sprayed it, stuck it in the dishwasher. So considerate. But . . . .

Sun through the window, dead leaves, the fine-needled green of their Norfolk pine. Beauty, ugliness, ugliness in beauty-- it wasn't black and white, was it? Some dance between the two? What was it in the Bible-- "this treasure in earthen vessels" or something? Bud grinned at her from above the dishwasher. What darkness was in her, so he thought, was the enemy. Her would-be savior walked around the table and sat on her right, making her left, sinistre, tenebre.

"How were the eggs?" Bud said.

"Fine."

"I'm still here."

"I know."

"So . . .?"

He seemed almost normal this morning. Was he acting? She ran her fingernails through her gray roots, took a deep breath.

"So, I hope last night was some kind of bad dream," she began.

"Last night? I've already forgotten about it. Clean slate every day. Only way to live. 'I protest, I die daily,' quoth the Apostle Paul. You were saying?"

"God, Bud, you are so impossible! We had a fight last night, yes?"

"If you say so. I prefer to characterize it as a positive communication gap which naturally induced strong emotions in the hope of better relations."

"Jesus! You-- I mean, I threatened to kick you out if you didn't come down off the mountain, so to speak, and here you are, still spouting New Age clichés. I don't know what to think."

"You are what you think. Right now you are ambivalent, a frequent precursor to a positive decision that you no doubt will arrive at soon."

"Listen to me, Bud, this is important: Are you going to continue to act crazy, insult my friends, be insufferably positive about everything or what?" Can this marriage be saved?

"Honey, I am positively no longer the Bud you knew before my transformation, but I am still positively for this relationship and quite willing to be your husband if you'll have me."
His Howdy Doody grin made her shudder. Should she call one of those de-programming agencies for cult victims? The light in his eyes was too shallow, that was it-- "Happy shiny people holding hands." Shallow light, superficial, as if he'd had a darkectomy. It wasn't human, it wasn't right. How to expose . . .

Bud Part 12: A Welcome Home Party

In today's excerpt Bud, recently graduated from the Institute for Positive Living, interacts with old friends at a "welcome home" party, managing to offend some with his new outlook.


*******************************************************************

"You don't get it, do you? A month ago you couldn't get out of bed and now you act like the world is your oyster!" She sobbed again. "I can't take it-- it's too drastic a change. It's like I'm suddenly married to someone else!"

Bud sat down and held her hand tenderly. "But you are married to someone else," he said. "Would you prefer the blob in the chair?"

"I don't know," she said. "Just give me some time to adjust. By the way, I've invited a few of our friends over Friday night for a welcome home party. I hope you don't mind."

"Mind? I'm delighted."

"Good. I worked swing shift last night so I'm going to bed."

"Would you like me to join you?"

"No thanks. I've been sleeping alone for so long, even when you were in the bed, that I wouldn't know what to do."

"OK dear, I understand, but just consider the invitation open. I really want to make love to you!"

Martha got a horrified look on her face and fled to the bedroom.

The routine of work comforted Martha for the next several days. Co-workers asked about her husband. "He's much better, thank you," she said without elaborating. Meanwhile Bud was a virtual dervish of activity, gardening, painting, cleaning, and mailing resumes to every conceivable computer firm. He made dinner and even washed the dishes-- there was virtually no housework for her to do except the wash. Soon it was Friday evening and the party was upon them. Before the guests' arrival she sat down with Bud for a talk.

"Honey?"

"Yes, dear."

How was she going to put this? There was no good way to say it. "When our guests come tonight, do you think you can tone it down a little-- I mean your positive thinking? Maybe talk a little less or something, nod a little more?"

Bud looked at her with chagrin. "But how can I? This is me now. I'm not some computer program you can turn on or off. I'm a human being, loveable and unique. I just have to be myself."

"But Bud, remember, these people have not seen you in a long time and they haven't gone through your training. I just don't want you sounding like an Amway salesman at a horse show, if you get my meaning."

"I'll do my best," Bud promised, "but to quote Popeye, 'I yam what I yam.' If this causes you embarrassment you're more than welcome to make excuses for me or just ask me to leave."

"But you're the reason for the party!"

"Then I guess you're stuck with me, dear."

As the guests arrived, Bud was solicitous in collecting coats and handbags. He greeted everyone warmly: firm, double-clasped handshakes for the men and light hugs with a peck on the cheek for the women. He exclaimed how marvelous they all looked and how glad he was to see them. Martha was relieved that no one seemed offended by his enthusiasm.
As they settled in for drinks, Bud found himself talking to Gerri and John. "So how's it going, guys?" he said innocuously.

"As well as can be expected," Gerri answered.

John toyed with his drink. "You know about our daughter, Katy."

Bud searched his memory. He nodded understandingly.

"She's seventeen now and her cystic fibrosis is worse," John continued. "She just got out of the hospital a week ago." Bud saw the pain etched on their faces.

"Most of them don't live much beyond twenty," John added.

Bud nodded wisely. "I know it must be difficult for you," he said, "but think of the closeness this illness has brought you with your daughter. I bet you don't have that kind of intimacy with your other children."

"You know, we don't," commented John. "That's a blessing we need to be reminded of."

"Yes," Gerri said, "and it takes a special person to see that."

"Thank you," Bud said gravely. "How are things otherwise?"

"Well," said Gerri, "we think Grandma is getting Alzheimer's. She's not so bad yet but she's becoming very forgetful. We took away her car keys and now we're concerned about leaving her alone."

"Ah, yes, Alzheimer's disease," Bud said. "It's very common and so little understood. But one positive thing about it is how forgetfulness adds spice to one's life. Just think: a hot fudge sundae might taste like the first one you ever ate. And you can watch your favorite videos over and over just like they were new releases. Every day can be an entirely new day, full of surprises. And sex can be like the first time, every time!"

Gerri gave an abashed look at John, who frowned back. Martha swept to the rescue and asked if they'd like their drinks refilled, sending Bud to the bar. "Did he say anything strange?" she whispered.

"Nothing too terrible," John said, "though his take on Alzheimer's disease might be considered unusual by some."

"Thank goodness!" Martha exclaimed. "I think he's just taken this positive thinking too far. Here he comes."

Bud returned with the glasses as Martha announced, "The food's ready!"

As the guests lined up at the buffet, Bud found himself between Irving and Diane. "How you guys doing?" he said.

"Fine," Irving replied, "especially since we're getting a free meal."

"Glad to hear it. How are things at home?"

Diane gave a worried glance at Irving. "Well there is Brook-- we've had some problems."

"What sort of problems?"

"Drug problems," Irving said with a finality that attempted to close the subject.

"Sorry to hear that," Bud said. "But what a character builder! Some of the strongest people I've met are those who've overcome a drug problem!"

"Yeah, well she hasn't overcome it yet," Irving said angrily. "In fact, she just OD'd last month for the third time."

"Third time's a charm," Bud said, grinning. "Maybe this time she'll get it. And if she really wanted to kill herself she would have done it by now so these are probably just 'cries for help.' She's telling you how much she values your support."

"Yeah, well I wish she'd send me a postcard instead," Irving fumed, and turned his back on Bud to load his plate. His hands were shaking with rage. Martha spotted it and asked for Bud's help in the kitchen. He didn't seem to notice he'd offended anyone.

So the evening progressed, Martha occasionally asking her guests' indulgence for Bud's comments, he cheerful throughout, never meaning to give offense. When the guests were gone they sat down together over a cup of coffee.

Rambling Monologoue; "Bud" Part 11

I favor Memphis in the men's NCAA final. In most of these games the best athletes win. Kansas has good athletes but I think Memphis has better ones.

In the women's final I'll take Stanford over Tennessee, though Tenessee has more experience.

For the NBA title, I favor San Antonio vs. Boston with Boston winning.

So much for my hoops Nostradamus interlude.

Recently the usual diurnal depressive pattern has reversed in me: I feel better in the morning and worse at night. Yesterday morning I got involved in "Birthday Alarm," a program that will automatically download your address books and allow you to send inquiries about your friends' birthdays, so you can send them a free e-card on their special day. By evening, after I had received several notes from folks who weren't comfortable sharing the information, I was embarrassed and ashamed that I had gone out on such a limb in the morning. I don't think I'm "rapid cycling," I'm just depressed, though not as bad as I have been.

I admire the shit out of my brother-in-law because he's always busy. And how do you get busy? You start by doing tasks at hand and just continue, and then the habit of motion becomes easier, downhill...on the other hand, I don't like the feeling of being driven, a feeling that has accompanied most of my years--something always pressing from behind, telling me I haven't done enough--actually, that principle is still operative in me, and no doubt my failure to be more engaged in some ways feeds my depression by frustrating my drivenness. Yet all in all, the busier one is, the better one feels. Anything that takes us out of ourselves is better than being alone with ourselves. (This does not include activities like theft and murder.)

Speaking of sociopaths, their sense of privilege and entitlement is something almost to be envied; since others are objects for them to use, since other humans are essentially beneath them--dumber, weaker, etc.....their feeling of superiority is well established. But I have heard from forensic psychiatrists that as sociopaths age they often become hypochondriacs--their narcissism of dominance over others yields to a narcissistic concern with their own physical health, concern with every ache and pain....to be fair, in prison they don't have enough to distract themselves from themselves, and being grouped with other sociopaths it must be difficult to bullshit bullshitters.

Given Bud's transformation below, is there a resemblance to sociopathy in his new attitude? Certainly his wife, Martha, doesn't think him normal. But who cares about normal when one can be happy? And is the ultimate value of our society "feeling good?" Certainly depression can drive one to endorse that value or state above all others. Moral choices still occur for the depressed, and I haven't noticed that my values have changed because of depression, but I think if my mood were normal I would be more apt to help my fellows. For now I volunteer to lead music on Fridays at a program for the mentally ill and homeless, and I volunteer at the Botanical Gardens where I sometimes lead tours. What else? I cook and make Kathleen's lunch and do some gardening, though the cats have been cruel to my flowers. I play on the Net. I read story-driven novels. I go for hikes. I pay the bills. I talk to friends and sibs on the phone. I watch a lot of basketball. I am hardly the example of productivity. But at least I'm not catatonic.

Today I'm facing a whole deskful of bills and mail to be opened and dealt with. I've avoided it all weekend but I may have to buckle down and face it today. Most of the bills are just notes from clinics and hospitals telling me that they've billed my insurance, or notes from my insurance saying how much they're willing to pay. They arrive in duplicate and triplicate, and often the insurance doesn't pay what it advertises. It's a giant, dysfunctional mosaic, our medical system as it exists. A single payer, universal health care system is a requirement for a western democracy--unless you'd rather waste money bailing out Wall Street firms and greedy folks who undertook mortgages they could never afford without refinancing when their homes quickly appreciated. Too bad they didn't. Now politicians want to rescue them. These upper middle class mortgage holders--aren't they more likely to vote Republican? And yet only McCain has resisted proposing to rescue them.

And remember, when presidential candidates propose something, they are powerless. Their proposals must be approved by congress, no small feat. We tend to forget this in the rhetoric. A president can propose and later enforce legislation, but he can't approve it; his only real legislative power is the power of the veto, which can be overridden.

And when did the burden of actually proposing legislation fall on the president? No doubt it mushroomed under FDR. He gave us hope; the war reinvigorated our industrial base. Strange that a war could bring us out of a depression, but that relates to Keynsian economics. As long as things are being produced and purchased, whether Pet Rocks or Pershing Missiles, it doesn't matter--the getting and spending, the economic cycle, is independent of the product. Who needs an SUV? Who needs a lawn ornament? The economy does. To the economy it doesn't matter if we sell widgets or weed. Getting money circulating is the whole idea. To be a good economic citizen you must be a good consumer.

At the top end of the economy, on Wall Street and in investment firms, faith is equally important. Whether one believes in the long-term health of the economy or not has everything to do with the Dow Jones average and prosperity on paper. And strangely, the stock market can do well when the indicators are bad and vice-versa--based on the faith of the investors. At the top of the economic pyramid is a confidence game, why economics will always be a soft science. When the money moves to gold and bonds, you know the market is going down. When real estate goes bad, the market usually goes up. This is because people with money have to put their money somewhere besides under a mattress. The people who really make money, as Tom Wolfe pointed out in Bonfire of the Vanities, are those who collect a fee every time other people move their money from one vehicle to another. The government knows this well, from sales to estate taxes. Even income tax charges a fee for the movement of money from an employer to an employee.

If money moves too fast, however, dreaded inflation occurs. We can't have prices skyrocketing because of sudden demand. Speaking of which, remember the inflation of the late 70s, blamed on OPEC prices? Why is there no crisis in inflation now, with the sudden increase in oil prices? I'm sure there's an answer, and some inflation is occurring--the cost of transport demands it--still there's no crisis and I wonder why. The real crime of the economy is no increase in the real income of the middle and lower classes for years, while the rich just get richer moving their capital from one vehicle to another. The divide between "have" and "have-nots" is simple: the "haves" have earned, or saved, or inherited, or stolen enough money to have their money making more money than their wages could. The rest of us just live hand-to-mouth, with inadequate retirement accounts if we have them and a vague hope that Social Security will be solvent when we hit 65.


*************************************************

"Positively Bud" Part 11: Further Reunion with His Wife


"Felt? You felt the way you conceived it. Feelings are just the results of our mental interpretations. That's what I've learned at the IFPL."

"I see. But could we discuss this another time? I really am tired from driving out here and I'd like to nod off for a while."

"Sure, honey, sleep all you want. Sleep is a wonderful restorative to our natural energies. Can I do anything to make you more comfortable?"

"Yeah-- just shut up for a while."

"Gladly."

The dirt road gave way to a mountain highway and as Martha snoozed Bud drank in the scent of the pine forest. Suddenly he heard a loud "pop" followed by the sound of tire rim on asphalt while the car fishtailed. He cautiously steered over to the shoulder as Martha woke.

"Bud? What happened?"

"Oh nothing, honey, just a flat. I'll have it fixed in a jiffy."

"Nothing! My God, on this narrow two-lane we might have been killed, or gone off the edge. What do you mean, nothing?"

Bud eyed her with amusement. "My dear, be thankful! First, the blowout occurred on a straightaway, not a curve. Second, this brief stop gives us a chance to stretch and enjoy the scenery. And lastly, isn't it good that we discovered a defective tire safely? Now we can replace it. I'll get the jack out and you just make yourself comfortable."

Comfortable? How could she be comfortable with this lunatic lecturing her on the benefits of a mountain road blowout? Suddenly she wanted a cigarette. She hadn't smoked in years.

Meanwhile Bud cheerfully went about replacing the tire, enjoying every minute of his labor. He put the shredded radial in the trunk and announced they were fit for travel, though the spare was only good for fifty miles. They would have to stop at a tire store on the way back. "Ugh," Martha thought.
Bud stopped at the first tire store he saw. The salesman inspected all his tires. "Looks like you need a radial to match the rest," he said. "The others look OK."

"What do you mean, OK?" Bud asked. "Are they safe? Are they good? Would you trust your own mother on a set of these?"

The salesman took off his cap and scratched his head. "What I mean is the others might be good for another ten to twenty thousand miles."

"That's not good enough for me," Bud said. "I want my tires to be perfectly safe. Give me four."

"You're the boss," said the man.

"Darling, you want to go get a bite to eat while they're fixing our tires?"

"Sure," Martha said wearily. They strolled over to a nearby coffee shop. Inside the air-conditioned haven pink booths of naugahyde surrounded dark tables. The waitress brought them menus, dog-eared and ketchup-stained.

"Anything to drink?" she asked. "Yes, coffee," Martha replied. "Just water for me," said Bud, smiling.

"Just look at these menus-- they're filthy," Martha said.

"Not filthy-- just well-used," Bud explained. "They bear witness to a popular restaurant that just can't replace their menus fast enough because of the vast number of patrons who must come through here."

"Right." Martha rolled her eyes.

"Feel like breakfast?"

"Sure, it's hard to ruin that."

Martha's biscuits and gravy tasted as if they'd been made from sawdust and Lipton soup mix. Her sausages were nearly incinerated, and the over-easy eggs were hard. Only her toast was passable, though there was only jelly and no jam.

"How's your food?" Bud asked.

"Just look, it's terrible."

"So's mine," Bud agreed. "So now we know one restaurant that we definitely won't visit again, an advantage to any traveler, and particularly myself since I have to come back up here to visit."

"For what?"

"For maintenance and monitoring. They have a spouse's group, too, if you'd like to come."

"No, thanks. I don't want anyone messing with my mind."

"That's like saying I don't want a dentist messing with my tooth."

"I don't think so," she said. Bud's attitude grated on her like tree branches on a window. Why couldn't he just bitch with her about the lousy food like a normal person? As they left she felt Bud's tip was overgenerous.

"Why punish the server for the cook?" he said. "And oh yeah, I need the credit card for the tires." Fifteen minutes later they were on their way.

"Can I see the receipt?" Martha asked. Bud handed it to her. "$360 for one tire? Are you kidding me?"

"No dear, I bought four new tires. The guy said the other three tires had some life left in them, but why chance it when one purchased at the same time had a blowout? Best to have the best tires. An excellent investment in safety."

Right, and a terrific drain on our already scarce resources. But he did have a point-- maybe if he'd discussed it with her. She used to leave these car concerns to him before his illness.

When they arrived at their modest two-bedroom home Bud could not contain himself. He ran to the roses, sniffing them with joy; he got down on his knees and smelled the grass, luxuriating in its green resilience while blowing a few dandelion puffs to the wind. After garaging the car, he sped to the backyard for more. Nasturtiums, hydrangeas, impatiens and the giant yellow marigolds-- the fig tree in the corner-- the brickwork he'd done long ago around the sculpted Bermuda grass and the covered patio he'd built. The birdbath needed cleaning so he immediately hosed it out and left fresh water. Then he came in through the screen door to find Martha hunched over the kitchen dinette, crying. Bud gently put his hands on her shoulders and asked,

"What's the matter, baby?"

"You don't get it, do you? A month ago you couldn't get out of bed and now you act like the world is your oyster!" She sobbed again. "I can't take it-- it's too drastic a change. It's like I'm suddenly married to someone else!"