L(-)-D(+)-1,2-diboro-3-penephalane
- Because I don’t know. I just don’t know.
- And I’m tired, and everything seems fuzzy except my head-n-shoulder ache, and
- the other kids, who seem sharp, they who know where they are going at 18, whose path is sure, through the big famous engineering program into the big paying important job … if I had that kind of confidence, I would have been somewhere by now.
- I want to hide, for a while. But there’s no place to hide, no movie theater or porn shop or remote corner of a dusty old library (no, I’m not talking about anonymous sex)
- I want to sleep. I need to make it through this. Go home after. Maybe call daughter, wife, mother, father, in the meantime.
F34r, 73r470m4
My father has colon cancer. I told you that already. I found this picture of a tumor in the colon. It looked sort of like a fetus to me, so I found this picture of a fetus. So, a surgical procedure to excise a cancerous tumor from the colon is sort of like a birth. My father will give birth to a tumor. Not like a teratoma, which are mainly benign things, but which more closely resemble babies on account of the hair and teeth and bone and occasional eyeballs and things. Like a teratoma, monstrous, from the Greek. Teratomas have been mistaken for feti in fetu, usually understood as parasitic twins who stayed buried inside, Heimlich, and when they are discovered are clearly Unheimlich. Like cancerous tumors, in the colon and elsewhere. Like the impending death of a father, when all is clouded in irresolution. The horror lurks, always there, you can’t avoid it, it breathes raspy and wet in the dark.
4 Dr34m F0r My Dy1n6 F47h3r
I don’t have much time, but I want to write a little about a dream I had this morning, after I fell back asleep.
In the dream, it was twilight and I was preparing everything for a gathering, some kind of celebration, that I think was for me, but ultimately seemed to be for my father. He was the host …
(or the “patriarch,” as my Jungian therapist says)
You see, my father was just diagnosed with colon cancer two days ago, on top of chronic and worsening heart problems. Last night, working as a nursing assistant at the hospital, two of my five patients were there for colon cancer. Two others with pancreatic cancer.
It was my father’s kingdom, a sprawling complex of farmhouses, barns, storage sheds, all converted to welcome my friends and acquaintances. I remember setting up a computer room, and the handful of antisocial techies who came to hole up there, along with others who flitted in and out to check e-mail. I remember dusty and dark rooms through which I searched for something I couldn’t quite name, with the lights out, having the sense that the room was much more vast than it seemed.
My sisters were there, and my daughter, I think, and my wife. Though I can’t remember if I saw these people, I have a sense of their presence.
My friend K was there, who recently lost his father. K was happy and friendly, in his easy-going way.
My friends J and C were there, married (I can’t remember if their son was with them).
Later in the evening, C would approach me, filled with such desparate grief and seemingly drunk. She fell into embracing me and kissed my face over and over. I thought maybe it was getting out of hand, she didn’t know what she was doing, her husband, her son, my wife, would end up being hurt. But she needed comfort, and took it. She kissed me on the mouth, her lips and skin soft and moist with tears, her lips parting and her soft tongue entering my mouth. And I struggled with whether to stop it or enjoy it, to inevitably feel guilty about taking pleasure in my friend’s desperation …
And it was late in the morning, and my wife woke me up so I could do some homework and get ready for work.
Fuck1ng W3dn35d4y
My fortune reads
You possess an excellent
imagination.
This is occupying my excellent imagination today.
l177l3 m4773r5
i have organic chemistry homework to do before class tonight. but it is my first “day off” in a week or two, and i’m thinking
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how can whether the recent distance between my wife and me can be bridged
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what is going on with my daughter and when will i be able to catch her on the telephone
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will i be in trouble at work tomorrow
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is my connection with patients at other work enough to compensate for my technical and time management failings
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international klein blue and my dead grandmothers
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my parents anniversary, my father’s slowly impending death
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my wife’s anxiety over her poetry manuscript
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jennifer love hewitt’s tits
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my scrambled finances
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all the things i need to do to prepare for new school next fall
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cis and trans isomers of cycloalkenes, whether and when they exist
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my comic book collection, cataloging and expanding it
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cleaning house before i leave, to smooth the way for the wife
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when and whether my ex-wife will send the legal paperwork in her late quest for legal custody and court-determined support
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probably some other things
