surgery and haiku

ah, under the knife for the first time. quite an adventure. i feel more traumatized two days later than i did at the time.

it was sort of like reporting for duty at the coast guard, only these people were really kind. but again, to lay aside your clothes and wallet, to have a needle stuck in your vein, waiting to be moved into the operating room and reading haiku did make me feel i'd suddenly intruded on another civilization.

one thing learned, things can suddenly get very hectic. patients wheeled to and fro in different cubicles. a new voice suddenly coughing. a doctor talking with a nurse about the novels of john dos passos and the movie 'the african queen.' (this became time travel. those were part of my youth and college. alas, for most people no more.)

finally, it was my turn. three nurses and the anesthesiologist. the doctor. they all briefed me. zoom, i was in the operating room sliding onto another table. the knock-out drops entered my veins. i briefly woke with an asthma attack when they pushed a tube down my throat. but it seemed like it was all happening at a far distance. am i on tv?

things went well i'm told. my prostate now shrunken, a catheter hanging down my leg (another first. unfortunately, the next day when i pulled it out i'd forgotten some instructions. so a new one had to be put in and i'm sitting rather uncomfortably with it now. sorry, i know you don't want to know all the gory details.)

my body seems to be fighting off bronchitis, which i've all-too-often gotten this time of year. strong antibiotics seem to be holding it at bay.

a couple things: get everything you need to do pre- and post- written down. skip a step and you're in trouble. also, get up, if you can, and walk around. a visit downtown this afternoon made me feel more normal. though, i must say, as i looked at 'things' beautiful and otherwise in shopwindows, i thought, 'those are for people who have a future.'

no photographs from this experience, unfortunately. it looked too much like the movies. that said, go to www.pbase.com/wwp for pictures of my former life. (hopefully, this is not a sex change.)

and many thanks to the doctor and all the others who helped!

surgery and haiku,

the poem that cuts

to the heart of things.

art and memory

so, another year! and i'm feeling reading 'crime and punishment'at age twenty, lying on my family's living-room couch for several days, has left a stronger impression than love-making or traveling. which goes to say, art is an experience which may be more powerful than anything else we do.

i can't say why. maybe it's the intense effect of form, missing in most parts of our lives. or perhaps it's the fact we fill in the blanks. a great story becomes our story, our possession, or our being possessed.

on the way to mexico we listened to the story of a flyer over africa. i can barely remember the real road we traveled.

and this xmas last summer's obsession with the painter francis bacon met one of his paintings in the berkeley art museum. suddenly, i felt inside it - and the paint so beautiful.

how vividly art expands our memory, our desire, even our dreams. at times i don't know what was 'real' and what i imagined, and i'm not sure it makes a difference.

i'm posting some photos taken at a graduation ceremony several years ago. the pictures seem to me to have this indeterminate quality. yes, it really happened. did it happen this way? darned if i know.

these thoughts come during the last hours of the old year. and on the other side of the earth it's already tomorrow.

www.pbase.com/wwp/memory2

the magical landscape

a friend just asked: "what do you think of the harry potter phenomenon?" hmm, took me a minute. then I remembered reading a book on children's lit years ago. the author said english books different because of their magical landscape, a long history of figures rising up thru the earth, or an adventure in another land set off by a ring, stepping through a clothes closet, or falling down a rabbit hole.

americans, being at heart pragmatic and wedded to science, don't have this hidden world around, below, inside them. (the indians did. www.pbase.com/wwp/indians_ghost_dance) it opens up too much that is ambiguous and frightening. our land is mostly raw material with a few mystics thrown in (thoreau, for example). but the need for this kind of magical feeling doesn't disappear from children or adults, tho it becomes submerged in our education.

well, this made me realize my whole creative endeavor has been to get in touch with these unrealized worlds. I've just posted 'in the mystery of a room' which you are invited to peruse: www.pbase.com/wwp/mystery and if you look elsewhere on the general site www.pbase.com/wwp you will find many manifestations of this experience: 'epiphany at peet's,' 'the secret life around us.' and I've done a black and white version of the chico dance theatre's photoshoot which shows in black and white the unsuspected stories evolving, yet never explained: www.pbase.com/wwp/bwphotoshoot

also in writing I suppose I am in the magical realist category, attempting to show our lives as surrounded by magic as any in mexico or great britain. take a look at www.pbase.com/wwp/spirit or www.pbase.com/wwp/apple my hope is that a more mysterious connection with our own home will push us to take better care of it.

don't project your own decay

onto the world! this is tough. as i grow older and feel my body falling apart, the opportunities diminishing, i rather naturally assume the world is collapsing as well. ah, but it's not, not really. as my friend jeff shore said years ago, "it's a matter of our technology keeping ahead of our stupidity." so far, the circuit boards are keeping us afloat. computers saved our bacon, making better use of the resources we have. and look at normality returning to kosovo, croatia booming with the tourist trade.

yes, luck plays an incredible part. i've no way of telling how much. the world can be made to fit any paradigm and thus remains a mystery. the nice thing is, i can interpret it anyway i want. so, i'll be a doctor on a space ship next time. (except, right now, simply not existing after the demise seems more relaxing.)

perhaps i've said it before, but it can't be repeated too many times. my grandmother told me on her 80th birthday, shortly before entering another dimension, "do it while you can." friends have died at 11, 12, 23(2), 36, 37, of bullets, cars, cancer. albert camus wrote, "there's no substitute for a long life," but some people like egon schiele pack a lot into a short time. as ramana maharshi recommended, "put one thing in practice."

ah, thanksgiving. how fortunate i've been, 42 years without health insurance, traveling in 40 countries with almost no money, good friends, interesting family, time to read 71 books in one summer, paid for looking out the window. actually, i was much more pessimistic at 20 than i am now.

count your blessings, cut your losses, and keep moving.

latest pics moody early morning shots: www.pbase.com/wwp/creek

the soldier's wound

last night i attended a new play 'another day in bagdad' by david a. tucker, II. based on his experiences as a reserve officer in iraq, it reminded me so much of vietnam i had trouble sleeping after. summary: the call-up is followed by a year's duty, two killed, one wounded, and ends with a second call-up after that. the show ends with a projection of names, those from this area who've died. as an afterward, the playwright answered questions very thoughtfully. he had, however, no resolution to the conflict, but said the situation in afghanistan demanded attention and to fight a war on two fronts classically disastrous (not to mention the possibility of three.)

first thing this morning, i did find an echo of my own thoughts: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/us/politics/02obama.html?th&emc=th i'm sure like nixon going to china, this is what's necessary.

though i never showed it, and it was never performed, pruned and fine-tuned for production, i did write a play about vietnam in 1967: www.pbase.com/wwp/red this is what it felt like on the home-front. and david said last night the disconnection of the american populance from the present war very troublesome.

i've never felt too good writing about politics, for a poet lives in the world of absolutes and perfection. in reality we must operate in the realm of the possible.

ah, getting back to this world has been tough. i've been out in the park taking fall pictures at least every other morning: www.pbase.com/wwp/creek

men, women, and the androgyne

hi folks,

this time in town I went public. made it to four art history classes, two plays, and a movie. now, of course, arriving back at my post I'm entirely unsettled, especially being up at four-thirty a.m. and driving back. normally, I like to come the evening before to chill-out. no such luck today. luckily, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, maybe snow, and I'll be sitting in the clouds. afterwards, indian summer. this is the typical pattern.

why did I stay last night? well, I had to finish the triple-header, tho it was completely unplanned. let me start at the beginning.

tuesday nite at the university film series, 'the pillow book' a film by peter greenaway. I'd seen it before at the pageant, fascinated by the images. it's quite a visual feast, and of course has the camp atmosphere the director enjoys, with lots of bizarre twists. supposedly about a japanese/chinese woman who likes to write on men's skin, it's really about her androgyne lover played ewan mcgregor. once he dies, the film over, but it goes on for half an hour more on a revenge theme. it would have been more moving and just if it ended when the woman burns her books and the gay publisher turns his dead lover into a pillow book (I won't tell you how.)

wednesday nite I felt very honored to be the first person (perhaps) to see the the rogue theater's production of 'the pillowman' at the 1078 gallery (the 2nd dress before opening). www.chicorogue.com frankly, I rather dreaded seeing this play, having read a summary of it on the web. it sounded really painful. but in the end it proved fascinating from the beginning and very moving at the end. true, I love this group of actor/artists and I am biased. when I see them live up to their potential, it brings tears to my eyes. see the show this week or next and judge for yourself. it is very much about men, their upbringing, their ambitions. I could certainly sympathize with the writer willing to be executed to save his manuscripts! ah, the follies.

thursday nite I decided I had to stay in town for my only chance to see 'doubt' at the blue room theater. www.blueroomtheatre.com I'm glad I did, though it's a very different kind of theater from the rogue (old blue room). the rogue is an actor's theater. over the years the actors in the group have learned to direct the action of the play as a whole and not just the actors moment to moment. this said, their actors work with a lot of freedom and force. it may be a bit messy at times, but it's always engrossing. the new blue room feels like a director's theater. this means the show has a drive and form firmly expressive of the director's hand. either form of theater can be brilliant or stupid. if the actors' theater has discipline, it can do wonders. if the directors in the director's theater have vision and skill, this kind of theater can knock you over.

to wrap it up: peter greenaway dealt with the androgyne, the rogue with men's issues and the blue room with women's. from these latter two I see a pattern emerging. this doesn't mean each can't deal with both sexes. however, it will be interesting watch the groups develop and their emphasis.

let's see if I can get some snow pics tomorrow.

best to you all,

wayne

www.pbase.com/wwp

lessons from the grave

how do you pass on experience without sounding preachy? after all, one person's clean house is another person's sterile tomb. (see the picture of the painter francis bacon in his studio, the room now part of a museum in dublin.)

that said, the hope of helping doesn't die. so i'll pass on a few (hopefully very succinct) observations.

1. most of the troubles of love come from the questions that are not asked. we'll avoid conflict until the war is huge and destructive.

2. physical and mental stress change our body chemistry. (age, diet, and a lack of exercise too.) endorphin highs come from running. all but one anti-depressant work the same way: they raise your serotonin level. simple as that. looked at this way, something can be done, otherwise it becomes a matter of existential anguish - my parents didn't do right, society's to blame, i was born in the wrong age, my character sucks.

3. julia kristeva in 'black sun' maintains all depression comes from not mourning the loss of the mother. (jung calls it 'anima' or 'animus' possession.) whenever i want to be taken care of like a child i get depressed.

4. ach, this morning i don't want to be where i am. which means: i don't want to be who i am. is self-acceptance (self-celebration) the cure for all ills? under such circumstances i have to get back in my body. the famous 20 minute nap often changes my mood.

5. and one last observation from oscar wilde: one doesn't do well in a world where everything is symbolic of something else.

recent posts, including a debate between a poet and a president (1983) and more fire pictures http://www.pbase.com/wwp/root&view=recent