A Milestone; A Taxing Time

1. Just now I noticed on this site that yesterday's post was #2100 for DawnReader. That surely does not seem possible ... what human being has 2100 things to say about anything? I guess I must have, though I would not want to be incarcerated and forced to read them all through again. Isn't there something in the Constitution about "cruel and unusual punishment"? If not, there ought to be.

Anyway, I've had a lot of fun doing this and will keep rolling along, I guess, as long as I can.

I just checked my stats--as is my wont each 100 posts--and here's what I found:

429,758 total hits since I began--so that's ... [pause for arithmetic] ... almost 205 hits/per day. So ... not too bad, though (as I've observed before, my total hits probably equal about five minutes' worth of hits on some celebrity's site. So it goes in My Small World.

Anyway, here's a link to the very first post I did (also my wont on these anniversaries), a post whose title ("I Am Born") I stole from chapter one of Dickens' David Copperfield. Always good to steal from someone talened!

2. And as soon as I finish posting this, it will, indeed, be "taxing time"--time to start assembling and organizing all my tax information for our accountant, with whom I meet on Monday morning.

We have been going to the same accountant for decades now. We like him. He's local; his wife's a teacher (so he knows what our lives are like); he's amiable; he gave us the name of a good clock-repair guy whom we still use when tick-tock goes into sick-tock.

But it's a pain, isn't it, putting all this stuff together? My mom--who did the family taxes when I was growing up--would shut the door to their bedroom/study and stay there for hours. Dad would warn us to stay away from that door (though, after a bit, we needed no warning, believe me), and he would take us out for A&W Root Beer or some other generally rare delight. "Your mother's on the peck," he would sometimes say.

(On the peck--which, I assume, is an angry-bird allusion? Too lazy right now to look it up--but I will!)

Until Mom emerged, looking as if she'd just barely won a bout with the Kraken.

And now--time for me to see if I can survive with the Kraken this year ...*

*spell-check tried to change Kraken to Karen!

The Kraken, winning ...

Staring at a Bookshelf in Some Sadness

As I get older, I don't seem to have any problems thinking of things that make me sad. We will not even get into the physical decline, all right? Okay, just one little (?) thing: When I was a boy in Oklahoma I ran around all day--and I mean ran. The only time I slowed down was to eat a meal or go to bed--though I really slowed down when Mom told me it was time to clean my room.

And now? I cannot run at all. Yeah, I have protesting joints now, but the main reason is vertigo. I live now by a very simple formula: If you run, you will fall. And that pretty much keeps me from running!

Okay, I said I wasn't going to get into physical decline. It seems I lied.

And I will not get into the deaths of family and other loved ones, deaths that, of course, have accelerated as I've aged. One of my best friends from high school is gone, one ... NO! NO MORE OF THIS!

But what I was really thinking about was lunch and supper. Joyce and I usually eat in our family room--we sit on the couch and pull up the little coffee table that you see in the picture above. (I took the picture from my vantage point.) From where I sit I can easily see some of our bookshelves, and that, lately, has become the problem.

From my lunch-and-dinner seat I can read some of the books titles, some of the names of the authors; others I don't even need to read from a distance: I recognize the volume.

And so I see Jay Parini's biography of John Steinbeck (dead), his biography of William Faulkner (dead), books by and about John Cheever (dead), Robert Frost (dead), Norman Mailer (dead), Shakespeare (dead) ...

I bet you're getting the idea by now.

Sometimes, sitting on that couch, I look over at those shelves, see those books, think about all those now-silent voices, voices that still "live," in a way, in the pages of their wonderful books, but voices forever stilled, forever prevented from saying something new to me or anyone else ...

It's horrible. I've watched, one by one, the deaths of the writers I grew up reading and admiring. Even loving. Thomas Berger. Richard Wright. Saul Bellow. James Purdy. Iris Murdoch. Robert B. Parker. Ernest Hemingway. And on and on and on and on ... 

Maybe I need to eat somewhere else? Though maybe I could write a best-selling self-help book: The Crying  Man's Diet?

Bedtime Storie--uh, Poems

the book on my nightstand

I first heard of A. E. Housman (1859-1936) back at Hiram High School (R.I.P.), my senior year (1961-62), when our English teacher, Mrs. Davis, required us to memorize his "When I Was Young and Twenty" (see below). I don't remember how I did on the quiz, but, given my "study habits" at the time, I'm sure I got at least a C on it. (I do know it now--and cold.)

Anyway, when I got into my Latest Madness (memorizing scads of poems) a couple of decades ago, I tried to shove back into my memory some poems I had learned (more or less) earlier in my life, and so it was that I recovered "A Visit from St. Nicholas," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "If You Were Coming in the Fall," and "When I Was Young and Twenty" (and there were others).

I liked the poem, and so I bought the book you see pictured above (yes, that is our copy), paged through it, found some others I liked, too, and memorized them--"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now"and "Into my heart an air that kills."*

I  also recently read a great book about Housman and his world--Housman Country: Into the Heart of England (2017), by Peter Parker (no, not that Peter Parker!).

And then Joyce and I began a (fairly regular) just-before-lights-out routine: I read aloud to her a poem (or two) from the Housman collection. (We are now on p. 148 of 247 pp. of text.)

Some of the poems--surprise, surprise--are better than others. Many are sad, dealing with the deaths of youth. Dealing with war. Dealing with lost love. Lost time. The rural past glows on most of the pages. Sometimes, after a particularly grim poem, Joyce and I will look at each other and (silently) ask: Why are we doing this?

But then we'll come across one like the one I read to her last night, number XXXIX from Last Poems. (I've reproduced it below "When I Was Young and Twenty.")

And then we look at each other with different eyes. As we do the world the next morning ...

*the volume contains A Shropshire Lad (1896),  Last Poems (1922), More Poems (1936),, and two groups of uncollected
poems--"Additional Poems," and "Translations" (Housman was a classical scholar).

**

When I Was One-and-Twenty

When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard a wise man say,

“Give crowns and pounds and guineas

       But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies

       But keep your fancy free.”

But I was one-and-twenty,

       No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty

       I heard him say again,

“The heart out of the bosom

       Was never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs a plenty

       And sold for endless rue.”

And I am two-and-twenty,

       And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

XXXIX (from Last Poems)

When summer's end is nighing

  And skies at evening cloud,

I muse on change and fortune

  And all the feats I vowed

  When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset

  Would lose the slanted ray,

And I would climb the beacon

  That looked to Wales away

  And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven

  The hues of evening died;

Night welled through lane and hollow

  And hushed the countryside,

  But I had youth and pride.

And I with earth and nightfall

  In converse high would stand,

Late, till the west was ashen

  And darkness hard at hand,

  And the eye lost the land.

The year might age, and cloudy

  The lessening day might close,

But air of other summers

  Breathed from beyond the snows,

  And I had hope of those.

They came and were and are not

  And come no more anew;

And all the years and seasons

  That ever can ensue

  Must now be worse and few.

So here's an end of roaming

  On eves when autumn nighs:

The ear too fondly listens

  For summer's parting sighs,

  And then the heart replies.

A Quick Exchange

Okay, this is going to be Quick and Light ...

After supper yesterday (Tuesday), Joyce and I drove over to the Kohl's store at the Stow-Kent Plaza. I had a purchase to return. (Google Maps says it's 7.1 mi. from our house.)

When my left arm was so badly disfigured (no other word) during the abortive attempt at an immunotherapy session on February 2, I wanted, somehow, to cover that grim sight when I went to the health club each afternoon (as is my dreary, dreaded task: I must do it; I hate it now).

No band-aid would suffice. The inside of my left arm--from wrist to biceps--was black. Not black-and-blue. BLACK. (It has begun to soften into some more rainbow-y colors now--a week after the ... problem.) The top of my hand was deeply bruised, too (they'd tried a couple of veins there, too).

So off we went to Kohl's to buy a couple of long-sleeve shirts I could wear while exercising.

I should add a note here: I have inherited the Dyer Gene for Perspiration (a gene now cherished by my son and his sons). I perspire heavily, and after my ordinary workout--which is hardly that strenuous*--I am generally soaking wet. I look, in other words, more impressive than I am. (Better than the other way around!)

So ... we found a couple of nice shirts--lightweight--some new fabric that never saw a sheep or a cotton ball, I would guess.

I took the Medium; Joyce suggested--in the kindest tones ever heard by Ear of Man--that I might want to think about a Large. I've learned to listen to her, even when I don't really want to. And so I grabbed the Large, headed for check-out, plopped down the plastic, you know ...

When I finally emerged from my Deep Funk (post-problem) and headed out to the club this week, I took the Large with me.

And was glad I did: It fit Wonderfully Well. But that meant, of course, that the Medium would manifestly not fit Wonderfully Well. I knew I would have to take it back. And last evening we did.

At the Customer Service window the kind clerk asked me the reason for the return.

"Wishful thinking," I said.



*25 minutes on a stationary bike, a mile of laps (walking) around the indoor track, 200 pulls on a rowing machine, 2 sets of curls with 20 lbs/hand

Wake-Up Word

I don't often have this experience, but I had it early this morning: waking up in the middle of the night with the memory of a weird word I once learned--and somehow still remember.

Now, we've all learned "big" words in our lives, haven't we? Strange ones we came across that we just want to remember? A couple of hours ago, I came across one I rarely see--but always enjoy. It was in Faulkner's final novel, The Reivers, and the word was callipygian. Here's what Merriam-Webster says:

cal·li·pyg·i·an adjective \¦ka-lə-¦pi-j(ē-)ən\

also cal·li·py·gous \¦ka-lə-¦pī-gəs\  

:  having shapely buttocks

Origin of CALLIPYGIAN

callipygian from Greek kallipygos callipygian (from kalli- calli- + -pygos, from pygē buttocks) + English -ian; callipygous from Greek kallipygos

First Known Use: circa 1800

I actually once used this word a number of years ago in a book review in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and my editor was kind of excited, I'd say, to learn it.

There's a related word, too: steatopygia: an excessive development of fat on the buttocks.

Nuff said.

I've had very few opportunities to use these -pygia words--though, rarely, I've found ways to sneak them into a conversation. Being a little naughty: my goal since early childhood.

Anyway, the word that came into my head early, early this morning did not have anything to do with butts--except, of course, in a somewhat indirect way.

The word was deipnosophist, and--as with callipygian--I have no memory of how and when I learned it--though my custom is to write down strange words when I encounter them. Some I tell myself to learn, and, occasionally, I obey myself.

I'm fairly sure I have never spoken or written deipnosophist, but it is a word that wouldn't be all that hard to employ. Oh ... here's what Merriam-Webster say:

deip·nos·o·phist noun \dīpˈnäsəfə̇st\

plural -s

:  a person skilled in table talk

Origin of DEIPNOSOPHIST

from the Deipnosophists, a work depicting a banquet where long discussions take place, written by Athenaeus fl a.d. 200 Graeco-Egyptian writer, from Greek Deipnosophistai, literally, culinary experts, plural of deipnosophistēs, from deipnon meal (probably of non-Indo-European origin) + sophistēs wise man, sophist

Now, I am not much of a deipnosophist, though I do, as Hamlet says of Yorick (the skull guy), occasionally, have "flashes of merriment that [are] wont to set the table on a roar" (5.1). But, really, dirty talk at the table shouldn't qualify, should it?

I've known some true deipnosophists in my day, my father among them. And friend David Anderson from Hiram College days still can dazzle me at table.

But these are not the kind of people we are likely to see many more of--not in our day when the TV is on, the smart-phones are glowing, etc. When families don't eat together very often--or at all. Even in many restaurants there are TV sets blaring away, with "experts" of various sorts bloviating about this and that.

Bloviate! That's another good one!

blo·vi·ate intransitive verb \ˈblō-vē-ˌāt\  

blo·vi·at·ed; blo·vi·at·ing; blo·vi·ates

:  to speak or write verbosely and pompously

< … the “lynch mob mentality” (in the words of a defense lawyer) created by bloviating cable news pundits on the left and the right. — Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review, 16 Sept. 2007>

Origin of BLOVIATE

probably irregular from blow + -i- + -ate

First Known Use: 1845

Nearing the End of My Faulkner Journey

A while back I decided I should really read those Faulkner novels I'd never read before. I mean, the guy won a Nobel Prize (1949), for Pete's sake (who is Pete, by the way? The OED traces it back to 1903 and says it's "a euphemistic replacement for God"), and I taught his wonderful As I Lay Dying for the final ten years of my career.  William Faulkner, 1897-1962. He died the summer I graduated from Hiram High School.

In the summer of 2004, Joyce and I drove down to Mississippi and spent a Grand Few Days driving around seeing as many sites as we could, including, of course, his grave in Oxford.

June 13, 2004

I'd read pretty much all of the famous ones: The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, the volumes about the Snopeses. But some of the others, as they say, had slipped under the radar. And so off I went, back to FaulknerLand, and read in order of publication the ones I had not read before.

I was doing other reading at the time, mind you. But when I finished some other book by some other writer, I'd grab the next Faulkner, all of which I own, by the way, in the Library of America anthology volumes.

So ... here's a list of the ones I've read since I started this journey, beginning with Soldiers' Pay, which I began on January 28, 2017:

• Soldiers' Pay (1926)
• Mosquitoes (1927)
• Sartoris (1929)
• Sanctuary (1931)
• Pylon (1935)
• The Unvanquished (1938)
• The Wild Palms (1939)
• Go Down, Moses (1942)
• Intruder in the Dust (1948)
• Requiem for a Nun (1951)
• A Fable (1954)
• The Reivers (1962--the one I'm reading right now)

So ... I'm reading The Reivers now--his final novel. I have some vague memories of seeing the film when it came out in 1969--with Steve McQueen! (Link to film trailer.) I've ordered the DVD from Netflix and will watch it when I finish the novel--a task I'll finish (I hope) by the end of this week. Just checked in IMDb and saw it was released on Christmas Day, 1969, when Joyce and I were on our honeymoon in New Orleans ...

I'll write more about The Reivers when I finish it, but right now--and the principal reason (i.e., excuse) for this post--is a little passage I came across today, a passage I've retyped for your pleasure:

It's not men who cope with death; they resist, try to fight back and get their brains trampled out in consequence, where women just flank it, envelop it in one soft and instantaneous confederation of unresistance like cotton batting or cobwebs, already de-stingered and harmless, not merely reduced to size and usable but even useful like a penniless bachelor or spinster connection always available to fill an empty space or conduct an extra guest down to dinner. (762, Lib of Amer edition)

So ... I'm not sure what all that means, but it's all Faulkner in a sentence! Can't wait to read the rest!

A Rough Time: I'm Back ...

Well, the title of this post says all--and says little. Last Wednesday morning, I exited Facebook and paused this blog (and my other one: "Daily Doggerel") because I was trying to recover--physically and, well, psychologically--from a very rough experience I had on Tuesday morning during the third of my six scheduled immunotherapy sessions.

Session Three--at the Akron Red Cross--was supposed to repeat Session One: withdraw all my blood (slowly, slowly), pump it through a machine where the cancer-fighting T-cells are separated, save those T-cells, return the rest of my blood to me.

Then--so goes the plan--those T-cells fly down to Atlanta, are enhanced with a cancer-fighting agent Provenge, are returned to Cleveland, where, on Friday, I was scheduled to go down to University Hospitals on University Circle to have those newly pumped T-cells returned to me.

During the blood-withdrawal process I have an IV in my right arm, another in my left (withdraw + return). The first session they had a little trouble getting veins, but they were able to complete the T-cell removal and (a few Fridays ago) the return.

But last Tuesday? A big problem. Although they found an accommodating vein in my right arm very quickly (one try!), the left one proved intransigent. I'll say no more than this: It took three hours and eleven sticks by three different nurses. No go.

And so home I went, bruised, bloodied, profoundly depressed. (My left arm, nearly a week later, still looks as if it belongs to a particularly aggressive drug abuser!) I can hardly lift it. "Simple" jobs like putting on a shirt, holding a dinner plate, tying my shoes--these require some, uh, determination.

So what did I do all week?

I lay around and felt sorry for myself. I managed to get over to the coffee shop on Wednesday afternoon to do my usual reading and whatever, but I could not exercise or do much of anything else. I slept--a lot. I summoned Dark Thoughts and lay, entertained (?), as they swirled around me.

I sent a note to my oncologist with a photo of my arm (which I will not share with you!), and, a couple of days later, he got back, apologized for all of it, said they will try a different technique this time: a catheter near my collar bone, a device that will stay in place until all of this is over.

So ... that will happen in a couple of weeks, I guess.

I began to recover some social equilibrium and psychological health (?) on Saturday night when we celebrated our daughter-in-law's birthday at Otani, a local Japanese restaurant the kids really like. And it was those grandsons, really--Logan (about to turn 13) and Carson (about to turn 9)--who got me "out of myself" and into their swirling worlds of wonder.

And so ... we'll see.

I made sourdough bread today. I whispered silent (and audible) words of love and thanks to Joyce (who dazzles me--and always has--with her compassion and empathy).

And I fired up Facebook--and my blogs. And on we go, gentle or no, into that good night!