Tomorrow is my 37 th birthday and I am leaving for London, Italy and France. See you in July!
Had a little surgery last night. It felt a little surreal, but it was a pretty minor procedure. Basically the Dr. cut away a 1" square area around my bad freckle, then stitched the skin back together. At one point I asked him what all of the wires and electronica were about and he said "That's because I'm going to burn your flesh."
I was a little taken aback by his choice of words.
"Cauterize your flesh." he corrected himself.
I told him there was really no euphemism for it. "Just tell it like it is." He laughed.
The flesh burning part is to stop the bleeding and to loosen the skin to make it easier to stitch back up, he explained.
Gross, but fascinating.
I also heard the little plop sound that my flesh made as it was deposited in a specimin cup for more testing. Also a strange experience.
In conclusion:
We are made of meat.
Meat that can be burned.
Meat that can be plopped.
Meat that can be cancer-y
and then cut away.
I waited all morning to hear back from the PA who had the results on my littel weird mole. We laughed when she finally reached me, because it had taken no fewer than 6 phone calls to get each other on the line. "Well," she said. "It turns out it's melanoma. Clarks II, invasive."
"Oh." I said.
"Sugery will contact you."
"Oh."
Mind reeling. That wasn't the answer I though I was going to get. And now, after reading a website that discusses "survival" rates for the various melanoma, I really am starting to freak out. But its going to be OK.
"You caught it early,"she said.
"Oh."
embarrassed to admit that I thought that a Grackle was an insect.
Also, the word "trajectory" keeps popping up in my brain of late.
Yesterday I sat with two German guys and a few Mexican kids and watched Germany and Holland tie in the European cup. There's something about watching sports with men that is very soothing,-- pleasing, even. They get so happy, and get so sad and they hug each other and they look like puppies. I sat in my chair and watched in slo-mo replay, the weird ballet of one man kicking another man in the face.
Grackle is just such a cool word.
Last week, going to Tijuana, I took my usual 50 cent bus to the centro to catch a taxi. There are always entertainers on these buses--some of them more entertaining that others. Sometimes they are just young guys from whatever local drug rehab place asking for donations. Sometimes there are a few people singing or even one person singing alone, without the aid of instrument. But usually there is a man with a guitar at the back of the bus, and he starts singing songs in Spanish as soon as the bus lurches away from the curb. Usually he has a guitar with a few broken strings, and usually his voice is none too fine, and usually I get a little misty eyed, and swoon with love for this nutty border town.
But last week, the man who sang at the back of the bus had a rich, sweet lovely voice. A real Voice voice. I turned around to look at him and I sat, enthralled, thinking, now there's a man that can sing! And when he passed by with his open palm and I gave him my change I thought, honey, you don't need my coins. You have the voice of an angel. And when I got off the bus I followed him for a little while. he had a curly, dark mullet and was very short. His guitar was old and had one broken string. I wished I had some money and was throwing a fancy party because I would hire him to sing. I wished I had the nerve to ask him the name of the song he sang, it was lovely. But I don't know if it was the song or his voice that left me with such a lovely, empty ache.
There's a cockroach crawling ever so slowly up my window screen. He's made it up 2 stories now. I want to knock him off but in El Paso Julie told me a story about shutting a cupboard door on a cockroach in Mexico and asking him to leave and never come back. He did.
This cockroach is huge and that burgundy red color that I find so hideous. I used to have a pair of cockroach-red shoes.
Please leave Mr. Cockroach. This isn't a good place for you, despite the inviting smell of reheated Indian food and my general slovenliness.
Please?
It's pretentious, but there it is. i am trying to be an artist, but it takes so long to become good. i write and the words come out with dull thuds. Characters paw and lump around and I can't find the flow. The magic. It will take years.
Do I lack drive? Do I lack talent, if there is such a thing? What I need most is persistence but the jungle drums of forty are sounding in the distance and I am no career jenny, nor am i a mother. i am just another low rent, earnest white girl calling herself a writer.
I'm not as low as I sound. I'm just wondering aloud.
OK, hate is a strong word but this damn kid in San Diego has to be the most annoying little prig ever. I loathe the Christian gay bashers, I really do. Can you point me to the page in the bible where Jesus says "make life hell for the fags cause I hate them"? This kid actually said "I love the sinner but I hate the sin!" on tv like he just thought of it. Please, right wingers, come up with some new rhetoric. To paraphrase Anne Lamotte, Spare me the earnest Christians.
And then there are those Enron guys. I feel almost gleeful that those conversations were caught on tape, but the level of greed and disregard for other people's lives is stunning. Hey, Christion boy from Poway: forget the gay folks, why don't you go after some white collar criminals?
God, I love Texas. We drank our fill of Shiner, had Tex Mex food every time we could, went to Juarez, swam in the pool under a hot sun, listened to doves coo-cooing in the backyard, listened to Robert Earl Keene and my new favorite, Pat Green!, ate Texas barbeque, spoke some of the Spanish, listenend to the twang in Jen's voice (cute!) enjoyed Charlotte, and just hung around. Jen, Julie and regina are three of my favorite people to be with.
Hell, yeah. Texas was great.