Happy New Year The Daily {W}rite January wk. o4

1.  Here it is! The last week of January, the last week in the first month of a new year. If change is going to happen, it's already changed. In mind at least. Now, the grunt work. Make the change real and not just a resolution. Change it all in this year to come.
2.  Wow! Checked my mail last Saturday . . . a shit low of bills from oncology totaling over a thousand dollars. Again . . . WOW! The problem is? I don't know how much money I have left to finish (if there is a finish) to the chemotherapy. When I run  out of cash, will they just dump me? thoughts like that keeps you from getting well.
10:05pm
3.  But then again . . .
4.  Oh! I didn't tell you about yesterday! It was not good. Had a bit of a relapse. It was really cold yesterday but I was dressed for it. We drove over to the student union post office then over to the OU Drama Department to get David's tickets for the ballet. We went down to the basement where they keep the dressing rooms, props, lights and the costume shop. I hadn't been down there in a long time. But a few people I knew were still there slaving away, building costumes for this show and that. I got a bit of the tour and think my mask scared them a bit. Anyway, we start back up the stairs and the shortness of breath kicked and I could breathe or walk. I sat down on the steps and David went I got the car. I was really out of it. All night was pretty burnt out. But went to sleep, woke this morning, and things were better. I did sleep pretty much all day, though.
5.  I may dream of you tonight. I know, you won't be there inside my dream. But just incase you are dreaming at the same time I'm dreaming and you accidently cross offer into my fantasy . . . I will smile.

Friday, January 24, 2o2oWe wound up in limbo at two different 4-Way Stop. David wanted to go and the car on our right waved us on, then David started across and the car that just waved him moves, David stops and waves the other driver on . . . the other driver waves David on . . . FUCK! I tell David what I do. I NEVER move on my bicycle until the other driver goes. He thought that was a good idea . . . But when we got into the same situation at JC Penney's parking lot . . . I swear! Twice in one day.

Racism has been on my mind . . . again. We as a country just can't get over racism. And here we are . . . 2020 . . . and still we can't get it figured out.

My personal ghosts have left off haunting me. Seems they slipped into my computer, found the poems that I often write about them. They were not pleased. They felt that my point of view

concerning them and their methods of haunting me were unwarranted, and for the most part untrue! Their feelings were hurt. They ran off  . . . I'm worried about them. No one else will take them in. Most people have enough ghosts of their own . . . they don't need to adopt. They'll be back. Who else will take them in . . .? They are after all my ghosts.

"I'm melting." The Wicked Witch of the West said that. Her last words, I believe, were: what'a world, what'a world. If those weren't her final words . . . they should've been. Some people never know when to shut up.

Saturday, January 25, 2o2o

My heads too big for the rest of my body! It makes tilt to one side or other, or it forces my full body falling backwards, forwards! I have no control over what my physical being does. No matter how hard I try I cannot think my head smaller.

Guess what? Went out for a walk all by myself. Went down to the Greek House for a gyro. And though the walk was slow, I made it there without any trouble. David met me there and we went down to Starbucks for coffee. And he walked with me back to my house . . . and I made it up the stairs with no problems. Almost a mile of walking with very little shortness of breath.

Sunday, January 26, 2o2o

Sluggish getting up today. Didn't want open my eyes even. But my eyes tend to be so free-spirited my mind can't control them. Many parts of my body are like undisciplined teenagers. I want to sleep and my feet stage a protest by twitching like a fish  on a fisherman's hook. My skin too gets into the action. All of a sudden, I'm awaken by a sandpaper sound . . . my fingers scratching away at a phantom itching on both of my arms. So, I get up. I wobble around, tripping over this and that . . . my legs on my side. They want to stay in bed. Sometimes dreaming is all we have to comfort us during our struggles through this . . . living dream . . . this dream that our minds cannot control. But night dreaming, eyes shut to the waking world, our minds a free to create whatever it chooses to create. I like that type of dreaming most.

Monday, January 27, 2o2o

There. I see it, now. Just right of your left ear. The moon, I think. Full. Alive. Much smaller than your blue eye that stares directly at me. I'm sure that the moon, as lovely as it is to look at, doesn't compare to the beauty of your blue eye. Oh, I am assuming that the other eye, the left eye is just as bright and lively as the right. But I can't comment on it because I can't see it . . . yet.

Wednesday, January 29, 2o2o
I feel good. But I feel tired. Very sleepy all day long. But better now. Lots to do tomorrow. Gotta start collecting all the different papers I need. To the bank to get 90 days worth of bank statement. I got most of the paper work already . . . now I just need to get copies of all of it and send it to the Hospital.

Friday, January 31, 2o2o
I haven't been that . . . wordy this passed week. I'm not sure why. Of course, it isn't the first time since I started chemo that I haven't felt much like writing.

My good friend, Kimm Abercrombie came down from Tulsa to have lunch with me. She bought her new friend  . . . the dog called Sadie. Sadie is a rescue dog and is very skittish around people she doesn't know. Kimm tried to get her to sit on my lap while Kimm drove . . . but Sadie wasn't having
any of it. She crawled off my lap and onto the floorboard of the car. And I couldn't coax up.

Kimm and David both are concerned about me living up stairs in an apartment. Both are wanting me to move to another apartment on ground level. David has done so much for me during these trying times  . . . my sister too has helped. And now Kimm has made some offers to help me that . . . well, that are pretty big. Time to think about accepting more help. Well, we'll see.


 

Happy New Year The Daily {w}rite January 2020 wk. o3

Got a new superhero wallet as a Christmas present . . . today. Yes, belated. My sister and I had a hard time making room for a few hours to get together, have dinner and exchange gifts. She also got me a 3-D Spidey pic. I got her a dreamcatcher.

Ha! I got a letter from some sort of accounting service used by Medicare telling me that some of the charges for my chemo therapy Medicare won't pay for. The charges were for the hospital "renting" the space in the hospital for the Oncology department. Yeah. We cancer patients are paying the rent for our treatment stations. I don't know. It sounds weird. It be like going to McDonald's, ordering a hamburger and getting a bill for $102.45 to help pay their rent.

Got me a copy of Once Upon a Time in . . . Hollywood and I'm going to stop typing and watch it.

Thursday, January 16, 2o2o
A very cold day out there in Norman-town. I don't need to go outside to believe totally that it's REALLY cold out there. The weather map on the internet says that in Norman-town, at this moment, it is 40 degrees . . . that is bullshit! All the students marching passed my window are bagged up in thick  jackets, giant stocking caps (so large the kids have to keep pushing the head-warmers out of their eyes), Thick, extremely thick gloves, most of them wearing high top boots, and scarfs! Unmanly for a male to wear a scarf unless, of course, it's a duplicate of the  scarf Tom Baker wore as Doctor Who.

I think there comes a time as an artist when you believe you have nothing more to say as a poet. I've been in that mode for the last week or two. Yes, I've been writing poetry . . . everyday since the beginning of the year . . . but is it any good? Does it say something worth the time to the reader to . . . read? I don't know. But writing something is better than not writing. Maybe by luck I'll "accidently" write the greatest poem that ever graced the blank page. So, there's no giving up, copping out, turning my back on the whole artist thing. I can't do that. Poetry is a part of me . . . a leg . . . a hand . . . I can't just cut it out of my life. So, I'll go on and on until either my fingers fall off from typing so hard or my heart, my poet's heart finely crumbles to dust.

Friday, January 17, 2o2o
Reading an article on the Rare Earth Hypothesis. Whereas the past the Earth was thought to be the center of the universe with everything revolving around it . . . science "proved" that the Earth was not the center and that it was just "another planet." And further study of the universe made scientists hypothesize that Earth is more than likely NOT the only planet in the entire universe to have life on it. And we believe that to be true, mostly. I mean, some hardcore Christians still believe that life was created on Earth by God, and life as we know it does NOT exist anywhere else. AND I ran across the R.E.H. on a Facebook post . . . AND I did some research and came across this:

" The Rare Earth hypothesis argues that planets with complex life, like Earth, are exceptionally rare. In planetary astronomy and astrobiology, the Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the origin of life and the evolution of biological complexity such as sexually reproducing, multicellular organisms on Earth (and, subsequently, human intelligence) required an improbable combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances. According to the hypothesis, complex extraterrestrial life is an improbable phenomenon and likely to be rare. The term "Rare Earth" originates from Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000), a book by Peter Ward, a geologist and paleontologist, and Donald E. Brownlee, an astronomer and astrobiologist, both faculty members at the University of Washington." -Wikipedia

Yeah! I know! We sort of took a whole turn around on the idea that there must be other life, other Earths just like this one. 

Sunday, January 19, 2o2o

It is Sunday. Ah, Sunday. The day of rest that God took after building the entire universe and, of course, this lump of living clay, the Earth, and al things that live, exist upon it. I dream of God sometimes. I never seen God, which is one of His/Her many self-centered mysteries yet to be revealed. But why keep what God looks like a secret? Well, we suspect that God looks a lot like us: So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. But does He/She look like us? Perhaps image has to do with spirituality. Perhaps image is our ability to feel? We know this about God. He/She likes privacy. But why? Why hide from the world, from the children who because of you are here? Seems a bit like child abuse. 

Tuesday, January 21, 2o2o
One of my Facebook friends got back online after taking a break from social media and getting back . . . real communication between two people face to face . . . communicating like our ancestors used to do. I had to laugh. What a pompous, pretentious statement to make . . . I didn't criticize him on his post but it was REAL LOOOOOOOONG and said nothing. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NYFq7ZJg4c

Well, this all for this week. January, flying by. See ya next week. {smiles} 

Happy New Year The Daily {w}rite January 2020 wk. o2

Here's the problem: staying up way to late (4-6 in the morning) and getting up way early (7-7:30) on a lot of days. It's not so bad because I'm going to Oncology to get my chemo shots or transfusions. Chemo doesn't take to long. About ten minutes of so. But the transfusions take anywhere from two and a half to three and a half hour ( or longer), but I do get to sleep through the fusion. Which is okay really . . . but then at night . . . I can't sleep.

Thursday, January o9, 2o2o

Evening. Another evening. Dark. A streetlamp on the corner keeps an eye out for ghosts, serial killers, all those creatures that live in the darkness . . . creators of the darkness. The weather-dude on Channel 4, blue suite, white shirt, a skull tight haircut . . . the someone I wore when I was ten years old. "Rain is coming and . . . SNOW! I parts of Oklahoma. Where in OK? Find out at Ten!" He says all this with a fake seriousness to his voice. He should of taken some acting classes.

David has a headlight out on his car. He wanted to go over to Walmart. "But it's dark. You'll get a ticket!" "Nah! I'll just drive with the high-beams on . . ." "But you'll get a ticket and blind a bunch of other drivers with you high-beams on." "Not that many people out this time of night. And I need yogurt." "Can you wait until after chemo tomorrow?" "Well, I guess."

Friday, January 1o, 2o2o

It was stupid. I knew it was going to be cold. David said it would be, the internet weather map said so. I didn't listen. I wore a t-shirt, a thin sweater over it, and my jean jacket, Levy's and jogging shoes with no socks. I thought that would be enough . . . it wasn't. God, was it cold. I finally had David take me home after buying a pizza Sergio's. Got home, ate it and fell asleep for an hour an woke up with a fever . . . took my temp . . . not a fever.

Saturday, January 11, 2o2o
You may have noticed from the entries above that I'm having a difficult time writing about anything of substance. The above is more a descriptive narrative  than a thoughtful dissertation on my life. Nothing wrong with it, I guess. And who knows? the above writes might be full of meaningful, heartfelt thoughts. Yeah, who knows. I never can tell people about my poetry, what my poems mean. That's up to the reader to decide, not me the writer.
10:41pm
Some moments when I'm all alone and it is extremely dark enough in my apartment  . . . something comes haunting me. What is it? A feeling I suppose, a memory is what I call it. Some sort of mischievous thought that loves nothing more than to flood my consciousness with dreary, sad and frightening stories of me and the boogeyman  . . . him chasing me through the old streets of L.A. Sometimes it's me chasing him. Yes, sometimes within my dreams I am the monster that tortures me.

Monday, January 13, 2o2o
1.  I'm having a fun time saying and writing/typing out 2o2o. Two twos and two zeroes . . . makes my fingers happy. Don't know why.
2.  Have you ever fallen asleep while walking? I have. Didn't realize it until I woke up face down on our front yard's lawn. Early morning, dew wetted grass. Missed work that day.

Tuesday January 14, 2o2o

I'm sorry. This week has been a no-show for my imagination . . . my authorship.  But I have been rather prolific when it comes to poetry . . . okay, may be not good poetry but poetry none the less. Sometimes a life, my life doesn't give me enough to write about. I accept that. I just hope my readers will. {smiles}

I'm in an argument with some Facebook science/friends who try to make me believe that I am not either the center of or the entire universe. I keep explaining that I am. Everything I experience in this life, this conscious life revolves around me. And when I die, if I die, all this, all this will die along with me. That last part really gets to them. They all believe THEY are the center of the existence. Silly creatures are humans. {double smiles}

Happy New Year The Daily {W}rite January 2020 wk o1

So, the clock struck twelve the old world deleted . . . or put into the archive folder in my computer's memory . . . we start over, reborn into a new world, a new life awaiting us. I cannot change the world . . . that's not a solid truth . . . but true enough . . . but I am in control of how I respond to what the world lays on me. And the world will lay it on me. It will beat me up no more than passed years . . . but maybe more and I will respond . . . but not like I responded in the past. I am a baby born today in this decade. I hope my new parents teach me well.

7:04pm
Allowing oneself to give that which has controlled him forever what already seems an entire life . . . not easy. Giving up alcohol? Well, I did really give it up consciously. After a night of drinking with students and throwing up on the lawn . . . my body not my mind said that's enough of this. And I was done with. Didn't have to go to one meeting of AA. However, smoking? Bigger chore. Quit many times and then went back to it. Tried the patch but that wasn't enough. Got COPD and that sort forced me to try harder . . . still, no relief. I finally found the nicotine gum, which I chewed for about to years and cheating all the time with a cigarette here and there. I would even buy a pack of cigs., smoke one and toss the pack. Yes, I was and with the nicotine gum and buying a pack, smocking one and throwing the pack away . . . I was spending way too much on "kicking the habit." But finally, I quit smoking all together and a year after (or so) quit the gum. Relatively speaking, I quit cigs., booze easily. But old habits, old thinking habits are . . . well deeper embedded in the imagination. It takes more time.

Thursday, January o2, 2o2o

there are too many MEs jabbering at me from inside my head. Too many to count or begin to name. But that's not the problem. I'm tired of living based on those voices  . . . the MEs I once was or never was. They fight for their individual existence. Each wants to be in control, be the ME of me. Out of body experience? I hear people talk about that. The spirit leaves the body and that spirit can see the physical self it is or once was . . . but even more. Once the spirit pulls away from flesh, it can see for the first time . . . the reality of the universe. But that is not this . . . those memories living inside me. I'm not looking for the after-death experience. I just want more of a  . . . out of my mind adventure. Memory is the ghost that haunts us all. And I want no more to do with it.

Friday,  January o3, 2o2o
I get very anxious when events don't happen they way they should. 1. At Sprouts putting my credit card back into my wallet  . . . before I could finish, Joni Mitchell (the costumer looked like Joni) says, "Excuse me." It seems I was blocking her way to the card machine. I didn't get angry. I just said, "Oh, sorry." and moved out of the way. Yes, a great moment for me. I did NOT get angry. However, by the time I got home . . . WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID: "What, lady, I'm sorry. Is the guy with fuckin' cancer moving to fuckin' slow for you? Hey, David! Get a picture of me with this Joni Mitchel look alike. Caption: Joni Mitchell harassing a poor cancer victim for moving too slow!" Aaaaaand SCENE!

Saturday, January o4, 2o2o

Went for a walk. Cancer guys need a lot of exercise . . . but not much more than walking. We went to a new park for us. it was way on the southside of Norman. Lots of spacious horse ranches out there. Big houses. Very rich. We found the park and a warning sign: No Horses on Jogging paths. I had to laugh. and I spent most of my walk looking for hoofprints cause I know no one is gonna give a shit about the sign. But I didn't look for very  long, A hundred yards or so of walking and I was out of breath. What the fuck? I can usually walk the length of Sooner Mall before I had to sit down, and that first length of mall was way more than a hundred yards. But I turned around and started back and realized that the first hundred yards at the jogging park was mostly up hill. The Sooner Fashion Mall is flat. So, I gotta watch where I choose to walk.
9:24pm
1.  I've given up my anger at other people . . . unfortunately my anger hasn't given up on me. It knows exactly how to push me into a manic fit. Sometimes I believe my thoughts need a mental straightjacket.
2.  I know longer feel the nagging need to be loved by another . . . human being. Yes, I am haunted by my failure as a  . . . lover of another . . . person. But ghost is more transparent as each year comes in and goes . . . away. Time is going . . . away from me. the ghosts my mem-mem-memory wishes to court has turned to nothing more than a fine, white dusts.
3.  It's sad to know that I well never be able to actually see myself. Only the reflection of myself in store winds, in the mirror, in the ripples on the lake . . . in a mud puddle. my nose, and mouth and porkpie hat turned into an earthquake as I stomp may way cross the mud's dirty face.

Sunday, January o5, 2o2o

Tumbling, tossed about. My emotional whirlwind. A rollercoaster ride. Up and down, depressed then flamboyantly happy. Can't seem to slow it down. My conscious break system
. . . faulty. My mind? No real control over anything in the moment . . . no control over my thoughts, my erratic, emotional thrill ride, my body, my health. It's all up for grabs. Who wins. The black and white of things. All of it collapsing in on my self-spirit . . . a landslide of muddy thoughts, fantasies, doubt. And it all makes a sort of sense, doesn't it? Living is messy business, like sorting through the dumpster behind your favorite Chinese restaurant. There's something good in here  . . . somewhere. Something worth the digging through all the garbage this dumpster world holds.

Here's a poem I wrote awhile back that says a lot to me.

Me

Me, this is me. A copy of me

from a photograph . . . of me,

which is also a copy of me

from a copy of a shadow

of a stranger of a shadow

of a dream refusing to dream.

This is me being me

dodging shrapnel from

a shattered memory

or two. . . perhaps three?

I can’t recall. 

This me . . . as I am and am not.

Schrodinger's cat in’a meat box,

waiting for the knot to be untied.

This is me. as I am, as I wish I were . . . 

as I'll never be . . . less than a thought . . .

more than everything, the total sum 

of nothing at all . . . becoming what I

never was, what I’m not now . . . Rules

whispered in my ear . . .

my hole existence . . . 

not worth the dirt 

it takes to fill a grave.

Woodie o5-o6-19

10:39pm 

I've been crying since 10:00pm. While taking a shower I just started thinking about the argument I had with my best friend and I just started crying. Crying about how disappointed and angry he is with me because I just can't write something funny for some idea he has about a guy trying to make an app. that creates world peace. I mean, it's a workable idea, but he doesn't write anything down about it, he just expects me and other people to write it for him, I guess. Anyway I got pissed about and he got pissed about it . . . And I took a shower and I just started crying . . . about that, about having cancer, about how shitty my whole life has been. I can't take it, I can't take it, I can't take it. See you tomorrow.

Monday, January o6, 2o2o
A torturous mind melt down last night. Although I have pretty much "oh, well" about the cancer and such . . . last night it hit me pretty hard that I'm probably gonna be murdered by this disease, and go "bankrupt" at the same time. But today I saw the doctor and she told me that there is a possibility that blood count may get better in the next month or so and . . . I might be "out of the funeral parlor." She didn't say that quote. That's all me. So, feeling a bit better than I felt last night . . . although I'm exhausted because I stayed up all last night, and I still can't get the sleep I desperately need.

Tuesday, January o7, 2o2o
A good day today for me, my body, my mind, my spiritual being. Depression over my present situation and depression over those old memories I carry around like a murder of crows  . . . all not knocking about in my head . . . at the moment. I stumbled upon this poem from, I think, 2017. No date on it so I probably never posted it . . . or did I? Anyway, gonna post it here and dub it a 2020 poem. This above, the poem below . . . the last blog posts for the first month in 2020. Made it through the first seven days of a brand new year. P.S. If the poem is to small to read, left click on the pic to make it a bit larger. {smiles}