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*MS*

For those of you not on Facebook, here is an update on my MS. Things have gotten significantly worse for me in the past year. I figured this would be the case, what with the (stressful) move across the country and the death of my mother:

1. MS is in all cases progressive and degenerative; that I'm worse off than last year is no surprise at all.

2. I can only barely walk a half block. I had a wheelchair in Portland, but it was a tad premature. Now I have to have one. I am trapped in my apartment, isolated, disenfranchised, and a wheelchair will greatly improve the quality of my life (the wheelchair I had broke on the way to New York.).

3. The tremor in my hand is so bad I can't even sign my initials. I have to have two rubber stamps (one for personal, one for corporate), but still I can't even come close to filling out checks or bills alone.

4. My speech is greatly labored, much more than it was a couple of years ago. It usually takes great effort for me to speak at all (a problem because I tend to be rather long winded).

5. My vision is worse. My ophthalmologist took photos of my optic nerves and found that one is significantly smaller than the other. This leads me to fear I'll probably go blind in one or both eyes at some point (doc said the shrinking of my nerves is almost definitely related to the MS).

This list does not cover all my symptoms, not even close. I can't even keep track of it all. This is simply a minor update.

*OPP*

Cecil

(Stephen Dobyns)

How calm is the spring evening, and the water

barely a ripple. My son stands at the edge

tossing in pebbles, then jumping back. He knows

that someplace out there lies Europe, and he points

to an island to ask if it is France. Here

on this beach my neighbor died, a foolish man.

He had fought with his daughter, his only child,

about her boyfriend and came here to cool off

when his heart stopped. Another neighbor found him

and thought him asleep, so relaxed did he seem.

He had helped me with my house, gave me advice

on painting, plastering. For this I thank him.

As I worked, we discussed our plans, how he wished

his daughter to go to the best schools, become

a scientist or engineer. I said how

I meant to settle down and make my life here—

My son asks me about the tide, why the water

doesn't keep coming up the street to wipe out

the house where he lives alone with his mother.

Is he scared, should I console him? Should I say

that if I controlled the tide I would destroy

that house for certain? Our plans came to nothing

and now, a year later, I'm just a visitor

in my son's life. We walk down to the water,

pause, and look out at the world. How big is it?

he asks me. Bigger every day, I answer.

*Quotations*

Jokes concentrate on the most sensitive areas of human concern: sex, death, religion, and the most powerful institutions of society; and poems do the same.

--Howard Nemerov

I have not failed; I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

--Thomas Edison

It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity. It's all tending toward mediocrity in the same way that all atoms are sort of dissipating out toward the expanse of the universe.

--Ira Glass

Absence weakens mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and kindles fires.

--François de la Rochefoucauld

A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

--Jean de la Bruyere

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

--William Arthur Ward

A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.

--Mary Kay Ash

Everything I've ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.

--Chet Atkins

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent.

--Sophia Loren

I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.

--Donna Tartt

*Poem*

I Think of Bess

Each time I find myself

completely taken up in

a woman (and it happens

often), when I wake

to see one face in

my mind's eye, when

I stop to discover

I'm overtaken with

a certain kind of

passion I've known

since adolescence,

my dear, long-lost, first

"serious love" Bess

is there in the room

with me. And I trip over

myself wanting the same

things I wanted back then,

to be more like

John Donne, barely

to contain the verve of

Shakespeare within my

puny frame, somehow

to channel Orpheus.

I come back to my senses

and realize I'm much

too old now for any

of that, too set in

my ways, too trampled

by the vagaries of time.

How could a person be

like John Donne when

he no longer believes in

the power of love?

He couldn't.

I can't. But I still

think of Bess.

*Music*

I downloaded Joe Henry's Scar which predates most of what I'd had. I sat down only intending to listen to a track or two; I listened to the entire album two times through. It's _that good_, but more importantly it holds up to repeated listenings. This is an artist with a fully realized conception of his place in the pantheon of great musicians. Every track is sublime in some way, yet these could only be "hits" in some alternate and slightly off-kilter universe. The sound of the _other side_ of the carnival. Every music of every kind seemingly makes its way onto the record, from jazz to electronica to rock n roll; Henry often uses a format that sort of sounds like jazz, but most definitely alt-jazz. Henry doesn't mess around with cheap lyrics, as you might be able to tell from the following:

"Don't tell me to stop,

tell the rain not to drop,

tell the wind not to blow

'cause you said so."

"Looking for all the world like for once

it was you not me that had been struck."

_____

1. Stop, Joe Henry

2. Tangled Up with You, The Mumlers

3. Miles from Nowhere, Cat Stevens

4. Everybody's Cryin' Mercy (Mose Allison), Bonnie Raitt

5. The Underdog, Spoon

6. Struck, Joe Henry

7. Nadine, Fool's Gold

8. Postcard, Jess Klein

9. Secret Heart, Feist

10. On the Road to Find Out, Cat Stevens

11. Rough and Tumble, Joe Henry

12. When My Time Comes, Dawes

13. Armchairs (live off Precipice), Andrew Bird

14. They Done Wrong/We Done Wrong, White Rabbits

15. Rhythm and Soul, Spoon

16. Junebug, Robert Francis

17. Mean Flower, Joe Henry

18. Tea for the Tillerman, Cat Stevens

Peace love and ATOM jazz