erudite

I want to write a poem in words no more than five letters long.

new boat
first day out
the buick
the orca
the old '58
wide river under us
wave upon wave
water not just blue
no big fish on
just bread and tuna
buoys will be buoys

good morning

Go Terry Schiavo go... She should be gone soon, and her parents will finally experience the grief they have been avoiding all these years. That is, unless they, as I suspect they will, dive headlong into rage over their selfish loss and continue to avoid it. The lengths we go to to avoid sadness...

Bulemia... If you look in an odd little book by Louise Hay called "Heal Your Body" she describes bulemia as the ultimate in self-loathing. The refusal to feed the self. That is not a quote, but it was something like that. It is the physiological manifestation of the barbie-syndrome. And what a paradox... to tube feed someone who induced vomitting to the point of cardiac arrest.

I do know a few who have chosen tube feedings over death, but few really know what they are choosing. They are choosing "not death." And the amount of care and maintenance required to prevent pain and decay is astoundng. The social cost, because money always runs out, is monumental. Life at any cost is a technological travesty. It starts with the ER (to simplify a complex argument, it really goes much deeper and into the religious fabric of this nation...world...universe....) The ER, the ambulance, the paramedic zeal, is where quality, not quantity of life, should begin. Their decisions are far-reaching and based in protocol that is imbeded in a health-care system that is based on belief. Everything is. Life IS precious. Mine is. I sit in conferences daily and review the code status of people who are a b'zillion years old and still, in the face of ongoing nursing home life and all it entails, want to be resuscitated... brought back to do some more time. And I guess that's the thing: It looks like doing time to me, but that's probably because I'm not doing it. But to experience the bone crushing reality of CPR in the elderly is barbaric. It is not life-affirming-- it is death-denying. We all gotta throw off this mortal coil at some point. (what DOES that mean???) I'm for dying whenever you like. I don't object to euthanasia, as long as it not state-funded or legislated. I won't vote for sex or death. It is nobody's business and like JoAnne says (or would say if she could figure out how to post comments) ..."for every complex question, there is always a simple answer which is usually wrong." or something like that.

Well, here's how superficial I am: I'm heading out to spend 200 bucks at Home Depot. In my world, that's a good day. My big plan is to get plants for my garden and paint for my metal outside chairs. I need a sandblaster and good paint. They are bouncy old blue chairs, and worthy of maintenance.

what?

Well, Bill Mahr is saying Bush may not have got it so wrong after all... that democracy is taking off like a brush fire in the Middle East.

I personally think he is the anti-christ.

Bush, not Bill Mahr. But it is an interesting turn of the talking heads. Pictures at eleven.

dyin' on republican time

Well, I say let the Schaivo chick go. Is that her name? She looks like any number of long-term tube patients I've cared for over the years. Vacant. I remember Mark--what was his last name?-- who's mother Janet came in day after day, drunk as a dog, and fed him the pureed meat of nursing home fare. He, at least, retained a sick sense of humor, but nobody knew he could even think for about five years after the car wreck. I guess someone finally said, "Blink once for yes, twice for no." and he did. For twenty years. He wished he was dead. There was this one guy named Jerry who kept pulling out the tube, so angry, so enraged by his life. It was a failed suicide. And they, the big medical THEY, just wouldn't take a hint, so, hands bound to bedrails, he lived until some too many years later, pneumonia took his side. That's the thing about these guys, these human preserves, they don't die. They live a long and often fairly healthy life because they are monitored for every sniffle. They never miss a flu shot. They are protected like the national trust.

Speaking of national stuff... do you think Jeb Bush will be the next president? President Jeb. That is so terrifyingly possible that when I heard it announced on the news as a casual segway from the Schaivo debate, the Schaivo Stunt, that my stomach, and that of my husband's, did flipflops. The right to live. I just want to go on record to say if that happens to me, pull the plug. I'm alright dead or alive. I'll just go on blogging...

And speaking of husbands, I guess the Christian Right has a stronger marriage deal. Covenant marriage. You have to stay in it unless... abuse, adultry, (let me try to get these in alphabetical order) alcoholism, liberalism, not wearing clean, pressed khakis to church, you just plain don't like the guy. I don't know. The list seemed ridiculous. And it turns out you can now upgrade your current marriage. You can do a Covenant add-on. The thing is, you could divorce. They could.

Personally, I've never held alcoholism against anyone. Why start now?

Hey!!! We got a boat. A 1958 Wacanda. It looks like a buick-- or an orca. Watch for us on the Willamette.

Dan Rather's Last Day

I should be watching his news channel, but I'm not. I never did like him that much.

St. Helens blew up. We were driving up Powell and saw the plume. It was happening just then. Right then. It was great to be aware at the same time it was happening. There have been other monumental events that I was unaware of--the seventies come to mind--and the first half of the eighties. Anyway, we dashed, as did half of southeast Portland, up to Mt. Tabor, which, it turns out, ain't all that great of a view. But the thunderhead-like cloud of smoke and ash had mostly dissipated anyway, and we went on to look at a fishing boat.

My husband wants a boat. We have nowhere to put one, but that doesn't seem like much of a barrier to him. He'd carry it on his back, I'm thinkin'. Greg, the fishing god, says that the fish are biting now because of St. Helens. It shook them up, he thinks. I think its just that he finally caught two springers. Big ones. My husband will be impossible to live with until he catches one.

There are a million things to blog about, but I'm exhausted from giving bad news to good people. Remember Ruby Miles? The one who called me and said she was lost in California? Well, today I had to tell her that she had to try harder in therapy or her Medicare benefit would run out. Try harder. She's ninety fucking years old. Try harder than what? Than she did when she was eighty? Come on. She examined me with the watery gray eyes of the weary, and said, "Do you like being a social worker?"

Well, I don't. Not at all.

popeye

Today. I read asia's flirt with separation from all known things and consider my own departure. This is no flirtation, mine (not that hers is... just her language always feels that way to me.) I'm here to stay. Cataclysmic change is good. In the midst of bliss I am up against myself though, and this time there is a witness to all that I would maintain in secret. I am whaddiam. Ask anyone.