Alright, Fuckers...

(Revised 12 Mar 05)

Dread descends into dread, within foul caked effluvia of dread, past furthest flung septic shreds of dread. I can see nothing, yet I anticipate everything. It can all go wrong.

My weeks have been your hours. Whole chunks of days stepped on, baby laxatives the beards of preening time-pimps. Washed colors are yesterday's evocation. A palette which must be unpacked, stripped of surrounding tissues, and viewed through an amber overlay. Only spires, radiating brachia. The melanomas whisper, but I'm too timid to listen. He sleeps.

This is the uncertainty I have cultivated. Unfortunately, I got what I wished for - the not-knowing. I must revel in it, inasmuch as one can be said to luxuriate in another's experience of disease, and snap the fuck out of it. Why? This is a moment leading up to the moment, a prelude tricked out in the garish prints of ER attendants, the cracked vinyl face of a rural hospital's examination table. Love demands full participation. The EKG looks like a fucking tackle box.

This, my droogs, is the cusp. We must love in the face of adversity, and learn to kiss death. Stick our tongues down its unforgiving mouth, and come up smiling. Yes, through the goddamned tears. (Cue your muzak. I don't care.) Through the guilt. Through your greatest sacerdotal hits, blooming to malignant life. When your pop weighs 130 pounds you just can't take hoary old horseshit like Whitehouse too seriously...

Comments

ommyth said…
Thanks, Sweety Gold. (Welcome to the blog forum, by the way.) I don't want to parade my father's illness and the family's steadily increasing anxieties overmuch, and I trust my reportage hasn't been too mawkish or too couched in poetic metaphor. I'm trying to strike a balance. My life is my art, such as both are, and these efforts represent a part of what I am driven to do. At this moment, however, there seems to be no balancing mechanism. The decks are slick, and my scuffs are coated in Astroglide...
ommyth said…
Thank you, Andrew. Not much to say, save that life is inscrutable by design. Dealing with it is better than dogmatizing its ineffable aspects. Having a parent slowly waste away sucks; it sucks for everyone else in a similar circumstance. So, no escape, yes, but no inevitable snuffing of joy either. My dad is in good humor, and his strength serves to lessen my confusion and distress...

Best,

TS
ommyth said…
Thank you, Roe. As reported previously, my father is in good spirits, and abjures self-pity as a matter of course. The old school dudes are not wont to wallow (overmuch) in morbid reflection. His is a profound example. He laughs, makes light of his plight. I can but love.

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