Maxine Nightingale is singing Right Back Where We Started From and I am remembering a dream where I told a widower that he was just a placeholder.
The dope tried to curse at me in Yiddish, I snorted and told him that with his track record with women he ought to walk away or he could find himself in need of physical therapy.
Not sure why I let a putz like that dried out neb irk me, but for a time I did and then I remembered and I laughed.
Sometimes a man engages in narishkeit and sometimes he let’s go. Took a minute, but I reminded myself that if you make time for one sided conversations you ought to let go and so I did.
Went in for my fourth infusion today and found myself softly singing along with Lou. The nurse who hooked me up to the IV asked me what I was listening to and said she wasn’t familiar with the singer.
I told her I was about seven or so when it came out and that meant it was probably 50 years old. I watched her realize I was significantly older than her and wasn’t surprised when she said she was close to 30.
Didn’t tell her she is much closer in age to my kids than me but thanked her for her expertise in finding my vein.
I haven’t forgotten how quickly I learned during my hospital stay that some phlebotomists would qualify as butchers.
My arms still bear some of the evidence of the crap I have been through this last year or so. But it could be worse.
I did some genetic testing to see if I carry any sort of cancer genes and was told that I have a 70 percent chance of getting colon cancer.
That wasn’t the sort of news I expected to hear and so as the nurse told me about my results I tried to process it all.
About 10 minutes after we finished our talk she called me to tell me she had made a mistake and that I have a 5-10% chance of getting colon cancer.
I didn’t flip out and yell at her, I think it was an honest mistake and was pleased with the new results.
Take A Walk On The Wild Side
Periodically I play around with whether I’ll shut every blog down or just a few of them. Sometimes I think about moving over to Substack just to see if I can rebuild it all for no other reason than just because.
A friend said if I shut it all down some people won’t be able to find me and I laughed. It is not hard to locate me, if people are interested in conversation and not voyeurism they’ll be able to locate me.
Midway into my thought WordPress tells me that on a certain date I wrote Take A Bite Of The Apple and We Are Bonded Together.
The part of me that says maybe there is something else says maybe someone is trying to send a message via posts I wrote before.
Could be true, could be false but regardless I find things both that resonate with me. I hear singers say “I won’t take the easy road” and nod my head because I often blaze a trail.
Read a ‘graph where I talked about feeling Dad’s hand upon my shoulder and smiled. I can still feel it.
****
I spent four days in Austin this week for a conference. Spent one night at a restaurant in the hills overlooking Lake Travis and found myself driving through a canyon with a big goofy smile on my face.
DFW is very flat and the hills I was driving through kind of reminded me of being home in L.A.
Stared out at the lake and thought about vacation, something more than a trip to LA. Maybe a trip to Israel and another one to Tahiti or Australia.
I have things to do, places to see and people to visit.
A Different Life
Friends of mine went to this concert. It at Dodger stadium and I opted not to go because the tickets were more than 25 year old Josh wanted to pay.
I had already paid for two tickets for a Ray Charles concert for myself and girl I was dating back then.
I barely made enough to cover my one bedroom apartment off of Ventura Boulevard in Encino so the 3 tenors was a big stretch and at that time I was only mildly interested.
It feels like a different life. I had no clue that within six years I would go to Israel twice, get married, become a father and bury a dear friend.
If I could have seen the future that would have blown me away but I look at it very differently now. As an almost middle aged man I am not fazed by how many big events took place during that period.
But at 25 if a fortune teller had shown me that future I would have been surprised at how much would take place.
Extend that time frame out a year and that includes 9/11.
That’s quite a bit of life in those seven years which brings my reflection into the present.
The explosion of antisemitism since October 7, the unhinged joy and ridiculous conspiracy theories that I hear makes me recognize how Iucky I am to be a GenX kid.
In many ways we had a golden childhood with far less crazy than my children have seen in multiple fronts.
But you don’t get to choose what time you live in, only how you choose to live through it. When people ask me if I realize how close I came to dying I often smile and say yes.
I know what happened and I also know I didn’t. I know I am made of sterner stuff and that I proved it. I also know I would have preferred not to have gone through it.
But it happened and I did go through it.
It was a teaching moment for me and something I’ll carry with me. I am not who I was before it but in many ways I am more me than ever.
Life is one hell of an adventure, you never know what will happen, only that you will be tested and have the opportunity to see how you roll when the storm hits.
Smile and dance in the rain.
Leave a Reply