Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ...

Michael Fassbender as Macbeth, 2015

I hate to contradict Macbeth (that dude had blood on his hands!), but tomorrow does not creep at a petty pace*--not when oral surgery is in the offing. As it is for me ... tomorrow ...

I'm in the process of getting an implant. A few months ago the surgeon did the extraction of the Evil Tooth, did some repair work, laid a foundation for new bone growth, then took a bunch of $$ from me and said he'd see me in a few months.

At the time, it seemed like a long ways off.

It's tomorrow ...

And tomorrow he's scheduled me for an hour and a half, at the end of which time he will collect some mega-$$ from me, and Joyce will drive the Dazed Me home, where I will search for Morpheus, beg him to embrace me.

Then--at some future time (how long?)--my own dentist here in town will screw in the new "tooth," and I will be able, once again, to chew solid food on the left side of my mouth.

The missing tooth is in a strategic spot: lower left molar. So about all I can manage there (chewing-wise) is a banana (my daily confirmation of my union with other primates) and things that the right side of my mouth has already reduced to mush. I'm kind of used to it now, actually, but, as Caesar supposedly said, "The die is cast."

(In high school, by the way, that line never made sense to me--I kept thinking it was a typo for "The dye is cast." Since I am a  Dyer, you can see why I would think that?!?)

As one ages (translation: As I get older and gallop toward the grave ...), one experiences more and more medical attention to the entire range--head to toe--of one's body. In the past few years, for example, I've visited (in geographical order)

• a neurologist (brain MRI--the findings were, in her words, "unremarkable"--not a word one wants to hear about one's brain!)
• an ophthalmologist (cataract surgery)
• a dermatologist to freeze worrisome things on my face (he seems to prefer my nose)
• dentists of various sorts
• a radiation oncologist (zapping cancer cells in my spine)
• an oncologist specializing in "that" area
• a gastroenterologist (colonoscopy)
• a podiatrist (guess what he was interested in?!?!)

So ... head-to-toe, as the saying goes. (Though my toes are actually in pretty good shape; it was my arch that had become nettlesome.)

And now it's time: 8:30-10:00 a.m.

Tomorrow.

And as the date has neared, I feel as if my life is now mirroring that old cinematic device--calendar pages whirling by, clock hands accelerating. (Link to some old video of such things.)

And I laugh at lucky Macbeth, who lost his head before he ever had to endure a dental implant.

*Link to Macbeth's "tomorrow" speech delivered by Sir Patrick Stewart.

2300

I let this one slip by me somehow. Dawn Reader Post #2300. (Today's is 2302.) Getting more inattentive in my dotage? Makes sense ...

I began Dawn Reader back on January 6, 2012 (seven years ago!), with a title stolen from the first chapter of Dickens' David Copperfield: "I Am Born." So now I'm seven years old. A second grader. (Link to that original post.)

The moment I typed those words, the heavens opened here in Hudson--pouring rain, and I can hear our sump pump heaving a sigh of resignation: Here we go again! (I'm not sure if Mr. Pump is talking about the liquid he must remove from the basement--or about another 100-post entry from me?!!?)

As is my custom, I have not looked at the "numbers" for this blog since #2200. [PAUSE WHILE I TAKE A LOOK.]

501,989--that works out to about 218 hits/post. Not too bad. But the days, of course, vary. Sometimes many fewer, sometimes many more. And--as I've said here before--I'm not really too concerned about it. I write for myself--to try to figure things out, to remember, to reflect, to apologize, to wax silly (occasionally, maybe, wise), to leave a footprint on the sands of time (and that, as some of you surely know, I stole from Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life," a poem I've memorized and mumble to myself (Mon-Tues, Thurs-Fri) in the afternoon as I walk over to coffee shop for Visit #2). (Link to the entire poem.)

Something there is that doesn't love a blog.* It's a self-absorptive (maybe even narcissistic) genre. We bloggers think (consciously? subconsciously?) that our lives are endlessly interesting, amusing, and significant. And we have no problem sitting down at the keyboard and spilling our guts and brains--thinking that the spillage will somehow soak someone else in wisdom.

Hah!

I don't really think any of that. Or feel it. As I said (and have said here before), I write for myself, and if someone else finds it interesting, amusing, informative, provocative, whatever, well, that's good. I love reading the thoughts of other writers: Sometimes, I find myself on a leaf afloat on the current of their thoughts and language, and there are geographical journeys that are far less interesting than that!

I don't post often about politics (as you may have noticed). These days--and maybe this has always been true--our secular churches fill up with congregants who are there for a single reason: to hear confirmation of what they already think. I doubt many (any?) minds are changed by Facebook or blog posts. The word fact has transformed into fake, and political disagreement has become a wall (!) between us. Want to experience the savagery of social wrath? Post something polarizing on social media.

But all of you know all of that. And I prefer to stay in touch with folks with whom I share some emotional history--even if their posts are, to me, sometimes abhorrent.

So ... what are my plans for this site during the coming days, weeks, months? I'm just going to keep on keeping on. Writing about my health now and then (words, to me, are the greatest physic), about books I've read, places I've gone, adventures with Joyce; I'm probably going to be serializing (soon?) the third and final volume of The Papers of Victoria Frankenstein.

And some days I'll have nothing to say ... and that's all right, isn't it?

Often there's a reason for my silence here. Fridays I'm almost always reviewing a book for Kirkus Reviews. Other days we're somewhere else. Some days I don't feel well--or don't feel like writing. (You know: Gloom and Doom.)

But most days I'll be here, braying away like an overwrought donkey. (Not an ass!)

Hee-haw!

*another bit of plagiarism--from Frost's "Mending Wall" (link to poem)

Of Frankenstein and Baking ...

As I declared not that long ago here, I have started to work on the third (and concluding) volume of my YA trilogy--The Papers of Victoria Frankenstein. (The first two volumes I published via Kindle Direct--and they're available on Amazon.)

It's taken a bit to get back into it. It's been nearly five years since I published the second volume, so I had to re-read both volumes to get the details of the story back into my head. Right now--I've written, oh, ten or fifteen pages, and I've been plotting out the story on a calendar from 1996-97 (when the story happens) and working on a map of the small town where Vickie and her father move after the sad event that happened at Niagara Falls at the end of vol. 2. As soon as I have a solid enough start (and am a little more sure where I'm going with it all!), I'll start serializing here, several days a week--a technique I employed with the first two volumes. Nothing like serializing to keep you working!

But yesterday--talking with Joyce--I got another idea: a mini-memoir about my years of baking--maybe 50-100 pp. I thought I'd call it Baked--but probably won't (although it would no doubt attract some purchases from druggies?!!?).

Here are some ideas I thought of yesterday while the notion began swimming through the ever-thickening lake of my brain and memory.

• I would talk about the baking I grew up with--which wasn't a lot. Neither my maternal grandmother (near whom we lived most of my first twelve years) nor my mom did much baking. Pies now and then (Dad was a pie-a-holic of the first order). Cakes (mostly) from package mixes. But I don't recall that either of them ever baked loaves of bread. Sliced sandwich bread (via Wonder Bread and Bond Bread [in Enid, Okla.]) was readily (breadily?) available, so why bake? Grandma--and, later, my mom--baked holiday fruitcakes, a tradition I have continued (using Grandma's recipe, though she'd probably gotten it from a magazine--I just don't know). Mom also bought those cinnamon rolls and biscuits that came in a little pop-open container, ready to bake. She would also use Bisquick for biscuits and shortcake and other goodies.
• I began bread-baking not long after we got married in 1969. The principal reason? $$$ We were living close to the edge--a teacher's salary (I was making about $6K the year I got married) and her small stipend as a teaching assistant at Kent State as she began her Ph.D. program. For several years--maybe more than several--we saved not a single dime. A paycheck-to-paycheck life. If I hadn't been so deliriously happy (with her, with my job), I might have despaired.
• My mom had given us some old cookbooks when we married, and it was from them (Better Homes and Gardens and The Joy of Cooking) that I found the recipes I employed for quite a while. I used active dry powdered yeast--but soon switched to Red Star Fresh Yeast: I had better luck with it.

• My yeast-baking went on for quite a while--decades. I had some success, some failure, some joy, some anger. But I never quit. It just tasted so much better than Wonder Bread, you know?
• The big change came in the summer of 1986 when my son, 14 at the time, and I flew to Skagway, Alaska, to do a bit of research on The Call of the Wild (my new literary obsession) and on the Klondike Gold Rush, an event that had involved my great-grandfather, Addison Clark Dyer, who had headed into the North with tens of thousands of others in 1897. (We have his diary, and Steve and I found places where he had been--including his original claim near Dawson City, Yukon.)
• While we were in Skagway, I bought some dry sourdough starter (and a little recipe book), and that, my friends, changed my life. I've kept it alive since then, so this coming summer it will turn 33 years of age.
• I've been a sourdough baker ever since--as my Facebook friends know all too well.
• With that starter I bake bread, waffles, muffins, pancakes, biscuits, etc. And a holiday favorite for me: a Christmas tree-bread. (My mother used to bake one; mine is mostly different from hers, though.)
• I also do other kinds of baking (non-sourdough): scones (various flavors), baguettes, corn bread, Grandma's fruitcake, etc.

So, anyway, I thought it would be fun to revisit all of this--the travels, the failures, the things I've learned, the routines (sourdough is like having a pet: you can't ignore it; you must "exercise" it regularly). Maybe some recipes.

And I want to make sure this is clear: I am an amateur. I've never had a baking lesson or class. Trial and error. And so I'm still making discoveries that would probably make a professional baker sneer in derision. That's okay. I've done it the way I've wanted to--and Life affords you so few chances to do such things.

Anyway, I just might get going on this project, too. Frankenstein and baking. As I think about those two, they're not all that unrelated. Both a baker and Victor Frankenstein take dead things, add a spark of energy, bring them to life.

So ... I’m thinking I'll get going on these two projects.

Then again, I might just take a nap ...

He's Back!

I've not posted on this site since New Year's Day. A bit of post-holiday depression swooped over me, and I found it was just about all I could do to get out of bed. One day I didn't even manage to do that. I was not "sick"--just in a dark cave from which I didn't really want to emerge. Even Plato dropped by, said, "Dude, what you see here is just a reflection."

I managed a "whatever." And rolled over and feigned sleep.

But as the week wore on, I got up, made it to the coffee shop (which I love) and the health club (which I don't), and gradually resumed what has become "normal" for me as I drift toward the time when I may actually get to meet Plato. (I hope he's learned English because I certainly do not know Ancient Greek!) And, gradually, the shadow passed on, taking its own sweet time, until I felt more and more like ... myself.

Still, I didn't want to do any writing ... not until today.

I am perfectly aware that depression has nothing to do with rationality. In so many ways, I know, I have to reason to be depressed. Ever. I've been married for nearly half a century to a wonderful human being. I had a 45-year career (teaching) that I loved. I've enjoyed some moderate success as a freelance writer. We have a great son who has a loving wife, two remarkable sons. Until I was in my 60s, my health was ... unremarkable. No major problems. Not many minor ones. We own our house. We're not in debt. I have health insurance, an adequate retirement income. We live in a town where people are amazingly kind to us. I have many former students who keep in touch via Facebook. I ... you get the point?

Like pretty much everyone else "of a certain age," though, Time caught up with me. Bell's palsy. Eye surgery. Skin cancer. Metastatic prostate cancer (it's lingering in my bones). One of the cancer treatments I take is a drug called Trelstar (quarterly injections); it has a number of odious side-effects. And one of them is depression.

And 2018 was a rough year in a lot of emotional ways. My mother died, as did a dear friend of fifty years, as did a couple of excellent students from years before, as did some other former classmates and colleagues. My life more and more involved death.

I've read some about depression. One of the best was by William Styron (1925-2006--author of The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie's Choice and numerous other stellar works). His Darkness Visible (1985), a slender book*--but in the way that a knife blade is slender. It dealt with his own struggles with depression later in his life and is well worth reading--especially if you share the visible darkness with him.

our copy

I see that I read the 84-page book in 2008--about three years after my prostate cancer surgery, about the time my oncologist was realizing that the cancer had returned. I just checked my journal: It was March 19, 2008, and I read all of it at Starbucks before driving up to Mayfield High School to spend some time with some writing students, 8th graders competing in The Power of the Pen under the care of a former middle-school student of mine, Brian Brookhart (who is now the assistant principal at Aurora High School). Here's what I wrote when I got home: had a great time—laughing, carrying on, talking about writing. I guess Styron helped me ...?

I love these final words from Darkness Visible, words that allude to Dante and Inferno: "For those who have dwelt in depression's dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell's black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as 'the shining world'" (84).

Inexplicable, indeed.

But, for me, the world is indeed "shining" again right now. The sun is out. The temperatures are moderate. There is no snow to shovel. Joyce will soon join me for lunch. And we will laugh. And darkness, for now, will be invisible.


*The title comes from the opening lines of Paradise Lost ...

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,

As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames

No light; but rather darkness visible

Served only to discover sights of woe ....

Hiatus

I will not be posting for a while.

A Quiet New Year's Eve

from Google Images

Neither one of us made to it midnight last night--again. (I really can't remember the last time I actually waved the New Year in ... maybe it was the Y2K year, when I stayed up to shut off and turn on my computer?)

This year we were actually a little closer to midnight than we have been in recent years--around 11, I think, when we gave up and doused the light. The high winds around here kept us awake for a while--but not long enough.

It's been our habit in recent years to have a fairly early New Year's Eve dinner at the Café Tandoor in Aurora, then head 100 yards south (is it that far?) to the Aurora Cinemark and see a film.

We didn't make it last year: Both of us had the flu, and we were ... otherwise occupied on New Year's Eve.

But this year--there we were: 5:30 p.m. Café Tandoor, where I always have the tandoori chicken + a selection of breads; Joyce--a more adventuresome soul than I--and more unpredictable--ordered something last night involving lentils and ginger. Not a molecule of her entree remained afterward. She also--always--orders the rice pudding, and I watch her with fierce envy. (I just can't eat things like that these days--not without a severe waistline consequence: one of the delights of the meds I'm on.)

It was a warm but blustery and rainy night, and it poured on us--well, on our umbrella--as we headed to the car to move it closer to the theaters.

We had decided to see Mary Poppins Returns--and I'm so glad we did. Both of us loved it, and This Old Man had tears in his eyes more than once. (More in Sunday blog.) The audience seemed to comprise mostly multi-generational families. And there was a pretty good crowd for 7:30 on New Year's Eve.

I drove home with preternatural caution. (Three guesses why--and the first two don't count.) We arrived safely a little after 10 (nearly two hours after my usual lights-out time) and headed upstairs to collapse and stream a little more, via Hulu, of the recent SNL Christmas Special.

But the eyelids, which seemed to have added some pounds at Café Tandoor, insisted on covering our eyeballs, and we went to sleep accompanied by the howl of Nature--and woke to 2019. We met in July 1969. Do the math.

Our Wedding Journey, Part IV (Conclusion)

December 20, 1969
Concordia Lutheran Church
Akron, Ohio

As our honeymoon time in New Orleans ended, we decided that instead of driving straight home, we'd alter our plans a little. Take a different route. I cannot remember now if we decided this back in the city--or if we just decided to Go for It once we were in the car and crossing Lake Pontchartrain.

But we took our new route, driving north along the Mississippi River--a trip that interested both of us greatly because, of course, of Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn. I had crossed the Mississippi more than a few times, but I'd never driven along its course. This would be the first of several times.

We reached Hannibal, Missouri, Twain's riverside boyhood home, and we toured the Twain sites that were open (not a lot--it was nearing the New Year). (I have got to look for our pictures before my next post!) We would return to Hannibal--several times. And would also visit nearby Florida, Missouri (about forty miles southwest of Hannibal), where Twain was born in 1835.

(And this began a pattern: Throughout our forty-nine years together almost all of our "vacations" have had a literary component. Sight-seeing. (Stalking?) Visiting homes and graves and other relevant sites in the lives of American literary figures. Even trips to visit family have involved this: My mom lived her last years in Lenox, Mass., not far from Melville sites, not far from Edith Wharton sites, not far from ... you get the picture?)

Then we made another alteration (had we decided earlier? or spur-of-the-moment?): We would drive from Hannibal to Des Moines, Iowa, about 225 miles northwest of Hannibal. My parents were living there, and we thought it would be cool (!) to show up and surprise them.

I think now about the innocent daffiness of all this: making major driving alterations in late December; showing up, unannounced, at my parents' door, a door that was some 700 miles from our apartment in Kent, Ohio. (My parents, by the way, were both teaching at Drake University at the time--brought there by their college friend--and now the Drake president--Paul Sharp, who had also been president of Hiram College during most of my dad's tenure there--1956-66).

So ... on we drove, the weather cooperating (as I recall). We rang the bell--and my mom, answering, actually looked thrilled to see us. (A good actor, Mom.)

We learned in an instant that we were not the only company: My dad's younger brother John was also there--with his wife, Juanita--visiting from their home in Walla Walla, Washington (Dad had grown up on a farm in the Walla Walla Valley). I loved my aunt and uncle and was thrilled to see them.

(I think my grandmother Osborn may have been there, too ... curse you, Memory!)

But no one ever suggested or implied that we should have given them a head's up. No, they found room for us, made us feel entirely welcome.

A couple of days later, we left for Ohio--a long eleven-hour drive (Iowa's speed limit on I-80 was 75 then, and our poor VW Fastback did its best).

Again--the daffiness of doing this in winter! Thinking that nothing could conceivably go wrong. (Ah, Youth!)

Late that night we pulled back into College Court, to our apartment (323) in a building that held three other apartments: two up, two down. (Our rent for this four-room apartment was $75 a month. My car payment was $60 a month.) (323 College Court still stands--though it, as yet, provides no plaque announcing that Joyce and Dan Dyer began their lives together there--what an oversight by the local historical society!).

We fell into bed, into a deep dream of happiness from which we have not yet awakened in forty-nine years. May we never do so ...