Really. I’ve been sent far more postcards than letters.

There was one with a print from Mass Moca on it.
And I am absolutely in love with someone whose name starts with an R…

And there were two from China, and one from England.
The English one had Jacqueline duPré on it.
I’ve never gotten this much airmail before. Thanks, to all you who wrote me, if you ever read this… it means a lot to me when people are willing to make the effort to communicate.

Oy, communication. I miss you, Rachel. I miss you epicly, hugely, enough for big poems about bakery windows and tea and tables. I miss you like phone cards and cheap coffee and hotel pastry, like the drone of planes landing in Newark when you’re going by on the turnpike. Did that make any sense? Believe me, it is a special and specific type of missing. The my-girlfriend-is-not-where-I-am kind of missing. The I-yearn-for-travel-as-long-as-it-means-seeing-her type. Every song I hear reminds me of you, every instance of purple tape, every stranger that’s willing to drop her I’m-a-New-Yorker-so-obviously-I-look-down-all-the-time face mask, stop blocking out the world, and smile at strangers on the bus because her day is just that fantastic. It’s a blue-sky longing. It’s like listening to Galileo on the train.

When I wax poetic, it sounds like a coffeehouse cat mewling into a shoddy microphone. I don’t care.

I can’t find my copy of The Good German.

I need to clean my room.

My dad’s confirmation/ conversion thingy is soon, and the cousins are coming, so clean has to happen.  Roar.

I just finished watching The Lives of Others (German- Das Leben der Anderen.) (subtitled, thank goodness.)

And I think that it’s the best movie I’ve seen in a long, long, long time. As in… ever. Truthfully, I haven’t been exposed to many of the “classics” of the cinematic world, but still. This was fantastic, and has quickly become my new favorite film.

It’s artfully shot, it has an incredibly talented cast, it’s well-paced, you get to know the characters, and its one drawback is that I, not speaking German, miss the nuances of the language. Relying on subtitles is a tad irksome, but not irksome enough to make the experience anything besides dazzling.

Go rent it.

I’m being REPRESENTED by these people… help.

Long Distance-  Rachel L.

I just want
to share
a cup of tea at
a little table
by the window, and we could have
a conversation about the
view of people walking outside in the cold, on the other side of
a fogged up window on
this winter day that I imagine spending in
bliss
with you.

–

I miss you.

–Warning! Danger! This is going to be a sob-story-ish thing, but I’m not an angsty person.  It’s just… sometimes I have to retell this story.–

Scene- cave in Oaxaca, 1987

My dad, on a dig, slips and falls in some bat poo.  Whatever, carry on.

A couple days later, my dad’s violently ill.  He comes home.  He’s got a nasty fever, stomach issues, the whole bit.  He’s coughing up a lung.  Not fun.

He gets a chest x-ray.

The doctors tell him that he has highly advanced streptococcal lung cancer and has two weeks to live.  He gets a second opinion.

It turns out that he had a lung fungus from the bat poo.  They put him on antifungals, and he gets better.

Scene- late 2005

He’s losing weight a little.  No one thinks twice.

Scene- Icy sidewalk, January 2006

My dad’s walking the dog.  He slips and falls on the back of his head and is momentarily paralyzed.  He gets a CAT scan, and there is something up with his neck.  Followup scans say he’s got a stage-4 squamous cell carcinoma in his lymph nodes.  (Go google “head and neck cancer.”)  About 2 or 3 weeks later, treatment starts.  He’s on chemotherapy and electron-beam radiation.   He quickly goes into remission, and the chemo and radiation sap him of all of his energy.  He takes the year off teaching.  He’s bedridden most of the time, and he feeds himself through a feeding tube in his abdomen.  He cannot swallow, can barely speak, and is generally out of it.  Also, brachytherapy happens.

Scene- Early summer 2006

Surgery happens.  Bilateral neck dissection.  The surgeons take out thirtysomething lymph nodes, lab lackeys inspect them, and there’s no sign of cancer.  Even so, the surgery was extremely invasive, and he’s got recuperating to do.  He gets better.  He starts teaching again!

Scene- Winter 2007

Followup scans say that his neck is clear, but something’s up in his lungs.  A thorocotomy ensues.  The sample is inspected… everyone thinks it’s going to be cancer… but it’s his lung fungus!  It appears that his weakened immune system let the fungus start growing again.  He’s put back on antifungals.

Scene- Late winter/ early spring 2007

Another follow-up scan says that most of the objects in his lungs are shrinking.  However, some are growing.  Another thorocotomy ensues.  His head/ neck cancer metastasized to his lungs.  Everyone’s devastated; he starts treatment and stops teaching.  Chemo only this time, his body wouldn’t be able to handle any more radiation.

Scene- August 1 2007

Random, extreme stomach pains.  Emergency surgery reveals a bleeding ulcer.  An 11-day hospital stay ensues.

Scene- present

Chemo’s still happening.  Once a week, every Monday.  It’s a three-drug cocktail and it’s not sapping him as much as it did last time.  It gave him a rash, but who cares?  At least he’s getting on okay.  And he’s going to start teaching again in the fall.  He’s in remission. He’s recuperating from the ulcer surgery.  So far, so good.

As my great-aunt Gloria would say, poo-poo-poo.  (It’s meant to avoid the evil eye, like knocking on wood.)

When I recount this story to people, they have really mixed reactions.  Some people get very pity-party, some just get depressed, and once, someone told me I was extremely well-adjusted for all this.

In all honesty, I’m just not scared anymore.  Seeing him go through pain is agonizing, but he’ll get better.  It’s terrible, chemo is poisonous, but it works.  What good will being terrified do?  I trust his doctors.  He’ll pull through.  This has been my reality for over a year.  It’s scary how you can get used to almost anything.  I’m essentially used to the monotony, the routine of his chemotherapy.

I thank Pandora’s Box for my hope.  Hope is important.

(to be further edited/ amended/ properly concluded?)

For those of you not on Eastern Standard Time, it’s 2:o’something AM. And I can’t sleep. I guess that’s what you get for waking up at 12:15PM. Vicious cycle.

I guess I’ll outline my plans for tomorrow.

• Actually get my ass on the elliptical trainer.
• Finish The Evolution Of Language (it’s by Guy Deutscher and it’s totally worth your while).
• Go to the city, maybe? See a movie? Meet up with a friend? I’m feeling antisocial lying about all day.

Today, I bought my winter coat. Indeed. It’s 95-fucking-degrees-Farenheit and I’m looking for winter clothes. Needless to say, I’m extremely pale, and I enjoy Nordic weather conditions… anyhow, it’s a black peacoaty trench. It’s knee-length and wooly and possibly entirely the nicest object of clothing I own. I’m excited.

Also, I finally turned my lovely macbook (how I’m bringing you this) into a smackbook. Seems computer science at CTY wasn’t all for nothing! I kid, I kid. I love CTY, and you do NOT need to be a computer scientist to do this hack. Search “smackbook” in YouTube, you’ll get the idea.  I hope I didn’t void any warranty…

Smacking the macbook to get it to change screens is becoming a habit.  This’ll be a problem on school computers.  I think I’m going to start bringing my computer to school this year, and start taking my notes on it.  I use NeoOffice, by the way, and you should too.  OpenOffice, if you’re a Windows/ Linux user.  Stop feeding money directly to Gates (disclaimer: I don’t dislike Gates; he donates to charity) when you could get something just as good for free.

Balso, I’ve been listening to quite a lot of Tegan and Sara recently.  Anyone else heard of them?  I’m becoming quite a fan.

…

I’m going to go try to sleep now.

Possibly one of the best descriptive passages I’ve read.

“At this very moment, Joe’s attention was diverted by the sound of someone, somewhere in the drawing room, talking in German.  He turned and searched among the faces and the blare of conversation until he found the lips that were moving in tine to the elegant Teutonic syllables he was hearing.  They were fleshy, sensual lips, in a severe way, downturned at the corners in a somehow intelligent frown, a frown of keen judgement and bitter good sense.  The frowner was a trim, fit man in a black turtleneck sweater and corduroy trousers, rather chinless but with a high forehead and a large, dignified German nose.  His hair was fine and fair, and his bright black eyes held a puckish gleam that belied the grave frown.  There was great enthusiasm in the eyes, pleasure in the subject of his discourse.  He was talking, as far as Joe could tell, about the Negro dance team the Nicholas Brothers.

Joe felt the familiar exultation, the epinephrine flame that burned away doubt and confusion and left only a pure, colorless vapor of rage.  He took a deep breath and turned his back on the man.*

…

*It was probably just as well.  The man was Max Ernst, not merely an artist whose work Joe admired but a committed anti-facist, public enemy of the Nazis, and fellow exile.”

America’s best straight ally- Jon Stewart.

“We run in the rain. Well, I run, and spin, and fall, and she catches me. And I marvel at all the stars you can see at camp, and she keeps me from falling off the path and when I say ’so many STARS!’ she says ‘you’re from a major urban center. I love you.’  She keeps me from floating up into the clouds and at the same time understands why I leave the ground.”

There are no words for how much I adore this girl.