I was never much into eating — my childhood nickname, “Adam
Fatam” began to slowly lose relevance from age 12 to 15 as
my body weaned itself off what, for a kid, were immense
amounts of prednisone — 20 mg a day — until, at fifteen, I
stood five-foot five inches and weighted about 105 pounds.
Nevertheless, few things are more physically satisfying than
a half pound mix of kale, arugala and mustard greens tossed
with a half pound of black beans and some kind of ersatz
dressing of fig vinegar and salsa or horse-radish, or
gazpacho, if it’s available, after
an intense aerobic work-out: an hour or more on the
stair-master or stationary bike or whatever, and a half hour of
the painful, boring but necessary
push-up/sit-up/pull-up/lower-back routine. Of course,
running was the true Bliss, before my right hip blew out
after 27 and a half years of faithful service. Hard to believe
this coming
May, 2012 will mark the 20-year-anniversary (shit I got
old) of The Summer of the Great Runs — ten, twelve, fifteen miles from
late afternoon/early evening till sundown in Prospect Park,
then jogging the few blocks back to my apartment to eat …
nothing, actually. I’d follow these mini-marathons with
beer and a cigar on my Brooklyn rooftop, but still, the runs
were spectacular…

I must have underestimated the situation at hand regarding
the spleen thing. I had
assumed that once they yanked out the tumorous spleen that
sapped my energy, keeping me asleep 20 hours a day, that
would be that. I don’t even know what a spleen does,
actually; never really heard the word used except in a
literary context, i.e. Baudelaire’s “Spleen and Evil,” or
“he’s a splenetic bastard!” (still a bastard, just no longer
splenetic).

Of course, I’d been warned that the evil insurgents who’d
taken over my spleen might have indoctrinated formerly
docile, hard-working peasant cells in the surrounding region
with revolutionary propaganda, turning them into Free
Radicals dedicated to bringing down The System. (I love that
they gave these allegedly nasty entities a political name;
consciously or not, whoever coined that term was an Obedient
Citizen, as well as marketing genius: who comes to the
rescue? The ANTI-oxidents; the cops, the marines, or whoever
does the dirty work necessary for The Administrator to
maintain the System. I was a Unix System Administrator
sending Kill-15 and kill-9 commands to waryward processes,
lest they break lose and become “orphans” who eventually
morph into “zombies” threatening the integrity of
mega-monster law-firm Shearman &
Sterling’s ten billion dollars worth of data. Fuck-up like
that can get a guy fired — ho, ho — so I kinda know what
putting down such rebellions — animal, vegetable or digital
– entail.)

Though usually sympathetic to such causes, I finally
gained some insight into minds such as Nixon’s, Stalin’s,
Mao’s, etc. I mean, who knows how they really felt? After
all, Nixon really did walk on down to the Lincoln Memorial
to talk to hippie protesters, see what the hell they wanted,
before the Secret Service whisked him away. Maybe he just
wanted to take off his jacket and tie, take out his flask
and pills — pot was smoke; “Quakers” don’t smoke — and
chill. Didn’t matter. They see folks agitating to bring
down the “system” and conclude, as I had — rightfully so –
that The System, however sinister, is ME. Thus, the Free
Radicals must be crushed.

Having already been told that nukes were not an option cause
I had lymphoma, which isn’t localized, and that chemical
warefare was outta the question cause it would kill my red
blood cells and bone marrow — not a good thing for a guy
whose congenital “condition” is low RBC and listless
bone-marrow — so I figured, hell, I had time. Go back to
basics: conventional warfare, the way diseases were fought
in days of yore: meditation: to defragment the hard-drive;
concentration: mental imaging, anthromorphizing the “enemy”
disease, and a whole lotta fruits, veggies and, if you can
find someone who knows his/her shit, medicinal herbs…

This is what brought me back to strict adherence to the
beans, greens and fruit basic diet described in EAT TO LIVE,
which I applied with great success to my messed up body in
the fall/winter/spring of 2007.

Breaking News: Free Radicals Refuse ASE demands to surrender; Martial Law imposed

Communique by medical personnel confirm: Despite cession of
the Spleen to rebel insurgents as a “good faith gesture,”
Free Radicals continue to agitate, refuse to cease and
desist from dealing illegal enzymes to support terrorist
activity, and openly flout ASE demands.

The Body of Adam Stephen Engel (ASE) is now under Martial Law and will remain so until victory is achieved, the Free Radicals subdued, eliminated, banished. Every healthy cell is subject to serve in the military forces headed by Chief of Staff, General Rufus Cranium, of ASE multicellular forces. Any cell refusing such service, for whatever reason, will be executed without trial or ceremony.

A total ban on sugar, chemical additives and all processed foods will be maintained while ASE, reeling from this surprise attack but eager to pursue this war to its bitter conclusion, arms for engagement and drafts and trains anti-oxidents from the relatively close and stable apples and oranges, Kale, broccoli and spinach, to such exotic fighting forces as turnips, kumquats, rutabagas and Albanian parsnip.

All manner of leafy green vegetables, squash, tubers and all variety of fruits, legumes and whole grains are encouraged to enlist and serve the body politic.

Highly trained Chinese Herbs and other Special Forces will participate as crucial components of this mass engagement.

General Cranium’s overall strategy relies heavily on deep concentration, imagination and will: rugged anti-oxident commandos, drafted from the lean, hard country of kale, collards and bok choy, trained in the arts of Chinese herbal warfare during intense boot-camp and special ops mobilization drills, will surge forth as Grant’s wave upon wave of Union soldiers washed over Lee’s South, drowning The Confederacy and it’s inhabitants in the blood of their own perdition.

Casualties? Eat more fruits and veggies, induct more recruits, train them in the ancient Chinese herbal arts and send them in to murder the damned “Free Radicals” one by one. Mass extermination. Radi-cide. Every Free Radical must die. The system will be cleansed. Order must be imposed and maintained. Only then can we as an organism be truly free.

“War is Hell,” said Sherman. To which Grant added, “Yeah, a HELL of a lotta fun!”

Asked for comment, General Rufus Cranium’s reply was terse,
but to the point: “First raise army; second, Kill radicals.
. Third, do laundry. Mine is a dirty business, you know. A
dirty nasty business. Kill, kill,kill ‘em all. Onward!”

So, that was essentially the plan. Total discipline of mind
and body. Concentrate, focus, stuff myself to the gills
with beans and greens, (and moderate amounts of whole grains
and six pieces of fruit — already lost 17 lbs. don’t want
to lose more and wind up looking like some, I dunno, freaky
cancer patient), which literally saved my sorry ass in
2007. That was the plan until my hematologist of ten years,
also an oncologist, as most hematologists tend to also be,
told me that he had found a chemo-cocktail that was
risky, but doable, especially since he’d start me out in
increments, slowly. Of course, there would be all sorts of
complications because of the whole DBA thing: more transfusions, more of the chemo-lite
drug that eliminates excess iron-accumulation from
transfusions, mega-doses of prednisone and other steroids,
etc. etc.

“But it’s better than the alternative,” he said.

“Which is?” I asked.

He showed me the CAT scans or PET scans or some kind of
domestic animal scans revealing vast bright territories with
menacing intent, obviously bent on overpowering and
colonizing my major internal organs. Plus some smaller spots
around my thyroid, and a bunch of tiny dots all over.

“Lymphoma. These are large regions, which might have
responded to radiation, but that would miss these evolving
nodes, the ones we can see that is, which could metastasize
at any time.”

“Well, uh, supposing I opted NOT to do the chemo thing? What
might that entail? Timewise. You know, life span. I really
need at least three more years to finish some stuff I’m
working on.”

“Without chemo, just eating “healthy foods?” Six months,
perhaps a year.”

“I need more time. Three years.”

“As I said, there will be complications, but I’m confident
we can get you those three years and more.”

So, I chickened out. Not that I was gonna forego the Beans &
Greens plan, or call back General Cranium and his troops,
but I’d supplement this course of total warfare with
weaponss of mass destruction, such as chemo and whatever
else they have in their arsenal. I mean, six months ago I
was working out and boxing. Hell, the other night I was eighteen,
drinking with my friends and our
girlfriends, taking a piss against a tree; I zipped up my
fly, turned around, and suddenly here I am, typing this
shit. That’s almost 30 years. Six months? Not a lot of time.

I dunno, maybe I could churn
out a few hall-mark greeting cards but not the stuff I’m
planning on. I need three years — more would be nice, but
beggars can’t be choosers — and I will GET three years (at
least). Diet to help the healthy cells grow, and toxic
chemicals to kill the Free Radicals…and just about
everything else. And make me puke. And need more
transfusions.

But still. My plan to “get clean” is seemingly contradicted
by Big Medicine and Big Pharma’s attempt to … “destroy the
village in order to save it.”

I began the chemo shit yesterday.

Had to drag myself in for a neupogen shot
today, also a “follow-up” to see how
it went.

“So, how was chemo?” asked The Doc,
awaiting a smart-ass answer. Too whacked
out to think of anything myself, I quoted
Clapton/Cream:

“Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you…”

He’s about ten years older than I am, and has a
wicked sense of humor, so he of course recognized
the quote and readily agreed to its essential verity…

Again, while we’ve developed a type of “personal
relationship” over the past ten years, exchanging
witticisms and bon mots, I am his prize patient:the only
“DBA” in New York, one of only about twenty
in the country — certainly one of the oldest if not
the oldest — so he has a vested interest in keeping
me afloat.

Had to review the 2007-2008 beans & greens victories. So
let’s go back, way back, to those halcyon days of credit
default, foreclosures, general misery and gloom, and me all
wasted on “pain management meds” (i.e. health-insured dope)
but, oddly, “functional.” That is, for three years after
fracturing vertebrae in 2004, I was able to sit up in a
chair and work; in addition, the oxycodone, oxycontin,
dilaudid, morphine sulfate, etc. didn’t make me spaced and
sleepy, rather the opposite. They speeded me up, kept me
awake at the computer for 24, sometimes 48 hours at a pop
(possibly the prednisone influence???).

The actual chemo crap is
once every three weeks till August.
But I’m all zapped on all these
other meds I take at home, one
of which is an anti-nausea pill
that does indeed work as well as
pot, but unlike pot, doesn’t do
much for my appetite, so I might
have to invest in a small stash
to make me hungry after I finish
working, usually around 4 am.
Also…I’m taking the chemo-lite
crap for my blood, which makes you
sick all day, and prednisone, which
makes you sick — as well as the
perks: psychotically violent and
impervious to pain — usefull here in Bushwick,
Brooklyn, formerly the per-capita murder capital
of America — it beat out some shit-hole in Texas –
though it’s “gentrifying” now, like the East Village
ten years ago. Began the
mega-prednisone dosage, which
makes me want to play in the NFL
and gives me delusions of grandeur
that I actually am a 6′ 5″, 275 lb
nose-guard who can run a five minute
mile…

But I have to go in every week for
various shots — to raise my white
blood count — not to mention
blood-tests and the boat-load of
transfusions I’ll be needing — I’m
not really supposed to be able to
survive chemo with DBA; then again,
I wasn’t supposed to live past 25,
so FUCK THEM.

So exactly two weeks (to the freaking day) after Dr. Spleen yanked out my spleen, I needed surgery again so they could put what’s known as a “Mediport” into my chest for chemo. Turns out that despite the Diamond Blastspam Anomie (DBA, as the hipster hematologists call it) thing, or rather, because of it, I can get chemo after all without croaking after the first week. I say “because of it” cause Raphael, Dr. Blood, is not only one of the top hemotologists in the Empire, he’s also, like most hematologists, an oncologist, and he came up with a concoction that will enable me to get chemo, that “strange brew” whose medicinal mission is to “kill what’s inside of you,” which unfortunately includes red blood cells and the marrow that manufactures them, abeit in my case rather slowly – quality over quantity; each cell is custom-made – which means I’ll be needing a shit-load of transfusions during the whole chemo trip (three months? Four?).

But still. It’s another stroke of good luck among many in my “carreer” as “the greatest invalid of ALL TIME” as Ali might have said, that the guy who’s been overseeing the whole blood thing, to our mutual advantage (I mean, there are only about 6-700 DBA’s on the planet; literally one in a billion, and I’m not only “the one in New York,” but quite possibly the oldest “survivor” on the planet. Mine is the face that launched a thousand dissertations – NYU’s a teaching hospital, so they’re all both doctors and “Professors of medicine.” No it’s so small prestige thing for him that “he” has managed to keep me alive and, before the hip blew out last October, working out two hours a day (boxing, I was taking boxing lessons when the damned warrantee ran out on the hip-replacement – can’t believe it’s been 14 years; the surgery I was supposed to have this month was a replacement of the plastic thingy attaching the silicon Me to the real thing; but much to Dr. Hip’s dismay – he’d already picked a color for his new Mercedes – it was preempted by more pressing issues) will also be handling the cancer thing in his other incarnation as Dr. Chemo.

The surgery I had two days ago, Thursday the 22nd, was to put some kind of “metroline” or whatever it’s called – Mediport, that’s it: Mediport – in my chest so they can dump the chemo crap in there and use my arms for all the transfusions. Dr. Mediport said that though they’d have to put me out for the “procedure” – reminds me of Unix, where everything’s a “process;” everything with these guys is a “procedure” – when I woke up it wouldn’t hurt more than “a punch in the chest.” He lied. Or is at least guilty of deliberate obfuscation: a punch in the chest by who, Mike Tyson? It fucking hurt like hell – and was on the same side, though slightly above, as the “entry wound” from the splenectomy, where the metal staples holding my guts in are still in place, which still hurts like hell. They’re taking out the staples Tuesday the 27th, the day before I begin chemo. Seriously, I could do well with a break from all this.

Meanwhile, the day before the Mediport invasion, while in the stairwell of The Coffin Factory, (as the building has been renamed, partly in honor of it’s 150-year-old original mission, and partly cause it just sounds really cool. “Coffin Factory.” Like Warhol or The Knitting Factory etc.) on my way to pick up a script from Duane Reade in Union Square, I caught one of the ass-holes from the small clan of troglodytes whom we and/or The Law haven’t yet “run off,” fucking with our mail — something he’d done in the past and which we reported to the Post-Master General, the USPS web site, etc. etc. etc. to no avail.

This guy is a “trust fund” brat who surrounded himself with thugs by giving them free rooms while renting rooms to poor saps for thrice the amount. He’s being sued by the landlord etc. but he’s “all lawyered up” as they say in the cop shows; hasn’t paid rent in a year, claiming the landlord hadn’t yet done this or that as specified under the new Loft Law (not a bad idea; but preying on the ‘innocent’ is
not nice).

This is the guy who called the cops and charged me with attempted murder last September, simply cause I threatened to kill him.

I told him he was tresspassing, tampering with U.S. mail, etc. and he, knowing full well my present condition, went with the tough guy routine. We got into an argument. Then he started pointed his finger, as the self-righteous sons of power often do, and said finger hit me in the spot where the metal staples hold my guts in after the surgery of two weeks ago. By accident? On purpose?

First: IMMENSE pain. Then, IMMENSE RAGE, then, the outrage that someone, knowing full well my present condition, would fuck with me in the first place, let alone poke me where I had my damned surgery. Like kicking a guy in the balls. Worse than cowardly. Downright mean.

So I did what I’d longed to do for months, prevented only by my craven fear of The Law, who never did anything to help us, until forced to by a judge, anyway: I beat the living shit outta him, much to the amusement and delight of about half a dozen Forbidden Ones (the Latino motorcycle gang who hang out next door at Pote’s Motorcycle Shop, Pote being the most Forbdden One of them all). They see The Coffin Factory as one of their “protectorates” and hate this guy and his petty “gang,” but stopped me before I went “too far,” and told me to split cause they knew he’d call the cops.

So I limped to the subway (landed a side-kick that would have made my Tae Kwon Do teacher, Master Lee, proud; then realized the surgery I was SUPPOSED to have had this month was tune-up of the hip-replacement; shit, I feel like a busted up old man).

So of course I got a call from one of my Coffin-mates that the cops were pissed I “left the scene of a crime” and were gonna arrest me for assault in the morning.

I considered taking the advice of numerous callers and hanging out in the city at my sister’s or going to Bonita’s or something, getting my surgery — the implant a “Metroline” or whatever, and then turning myself in. But it was thurday and the surgery would be on a Friday and I wouldn’t get out till late Friday afternoon, which would mean the entire week-end in jail hanging out with REAL bad-asses, shackled to a hospital bed with two cops on guard so I could recover from the surgery and get my medication. No thanks. So I did one better: I returned to The Coffin Factory and called 911 charging the bastard with assault, breaking and entering, and tampering with mail.

Of course they sent the same two cops, but they were a lot cooler this time, now that they wouldn’t have to come back for me in the morning. Also, they hate this guy and his troupe of rogues and rapscallions about as much as I do.

They told me everything was cool, they didn’t charge me with ‘assault’ but ‘harrassment,’ which is not an arrestable offense, and that I’d get to go to court. This was immensely good news — I didn’t mind getting put in the slammer for a day or so as long as it wasn’t a Friday, which is was hence week-end in jail — because this fucker, made even more enemies than I’ve made allies. Dozens of folks would love to burn him in court. So, I got to pound this lump of human be into the sidewalk FOR FREE.

But I must admit…my hip and side kinda smart. Whatever. If The Law came and cut my leg off
as “a warning” it still would have been worth it…

It just occurred to me, on this, my second straight all-nighter (I did get about half-hour’s “sleep” when they put me out to stick this thing in my chest. Yow. It SMARTS. They tried to shoot me up with Fentanyl in the recovery room afterwards – 50x strength of heroin. After the second shot I said I was fine. I was NOT fine, but I didn’t want to look like a weepy-whiny-wussy-pants):

though that thing about ex-junkies over-dosing by shooting/snorting/swallowing the same dosage that used to get them off when they were getting wasted daily is true, I believe it’s also true that ex-junkies have a MUCH higher tolerance than “plain old folks,” a tolerance that it might take years to wear down. So the reason the “morphine drip” they had me on after the spleen-removal was so ineffective, despite a “chaser” shot of fentanyl (a similarly weak dose, I assume), that I had myself unhooked and “settled” for a couple of percocet — which was neither more nor less effective than 4 to 6 peanut-butter M&MS, though the M&Ms would have at least satisfied the hunger pangs I had from “not eating or drinking after midnight” so I wouldn’t puke on the operating table; and the two shots of fentanyl (plus 5 measly milligrams of oxycodone) they gave me on Mediport day did nothing more than give me a slight buzz, is that my tolerance, at this point, is way beyond anything they would “usually” dish out to patients after surgery.

So…I’m kinda screwed.

But that’s actually not what “occurred to me,” when the thought-occurrence occurred, just another one of the many parenthetical remarks – I wonder if this is a result of studying all that Lisp programming, in which every line or statement is in parentheses – that now appear whenever I write anything longer than a “text message.” No, the real “it occurred to me” referred to this:

I’m not dealing with some “literary exercise” or stupid street fight with one of the local thugs — who add so much color to the region for trust-fund brats “slumming it” for a year or two after college; this is REAL SHIT. Especially since without chemo they gave me “about six months to a year,” but with chemo, I’m gonna need a so many transfusions that ExJade (deferasirox), the “chemo-lite” I have to take to reduce the excess ferratin (iron) that’s a side-effect of transfusions, might not be able to keep up the pace and I might keel from iron overload, IF the “therapeautic” destruction of my red cells and bone marrow doesn’t either zap me out or make further chemo treatments impossible, making the six months to a year option no longer an option, but the final sentence of this particular 47-year-old narrative…

I mean like, this is serious shit. I could DIE. Which would, I assume, prevent me from plowing through these hard-copy and PDF computer manuals, not to mention put the kabosh on the “at least three years” I demanded to satisfy my insatiable Ego requirements, i.e. if I die today, or tomorrow, I left behind a small but dense body of work that would mark me as an extraordinary writer — like anyone beside my ever-faithful ex-mother-in-law, Phyllis, could give a damn about the artifacts I add to the already over-stocked pile of American “literature” — but given another 3 to 5 years of steroid-amphetamine-caffeine-nicotine inspired work, I might be able to push myself “over the top” and die a great writer (or so goes the rationale in my own twisted imagination, for putting myself through this shit instead of journeying as far as the next block to score a lethal dose of heroin). Again an ultimately meaningless ego thing (not to mention so subjective it borders on the hallucinatory/schizophrenic) in even the best of circumstances (1920 – 1980, more or less), never mind this age of imbecilic, complacent mediocrity and talk-talk-talkety-talk and anyway, besides the depressing fact that if I sold 500 copies of any of my books or all combined I’d qualify as a best-selling publishing phenomenon, I could hallucinate myself into the company of Dante and Shakespeare, but ultimately just be too damned dead and buried (cremated?) to actually discern the difference between that and my corn-ball Shelleyan teenage scribblings…

But I just can’t help myself (maybe it’s the overall boredom, entropy, torpor of this era of mass murder of, by and for the Empire States of America). Despite so much back-and-forth subway travel I will surely qualify for “frequent flyer miles” by mid-Spring…I just find the whole thing so damned EXCITING!

I mean, this will indeed by my third trip to the End Zone, but the other two lasted a few weeks and a week, respectively, and I was totally “out of it,” not months of acute awareness, and not with so many variables, and the mere possibility of “beating the rap” would be something worthy of a an M.D., Ph.D’s doctoral thesis, nevermind the whole “literature” rigmarole; how often do modern-day bourgeois monks who’ve spent the majority of their lives in front of books and computer screens get a chance to do something REAL?

I finally understand what I mean when my mother suddenly and shockingly died when I was in my twenties and I said to the mortification (PUN!!!) of my then-girlfriend that, “I never respected my mother so much in my life.”

I never respected her in any way until my sister called that morning in 1994 to tell me the news…but suddenly I respected her to the point of awe and admiration. I mean, for the first time since I’d known her — and I’d known her all my life — she actually got up and DID something real. I just couldn’t believe it. I just never would have believed she’d have the guts to just wake up one morning and drop dead. I was literally in awe. What a great leap from cigarette smoking, pill-popping, upper-middle-class suburban mother-wife, to being an actual DEAD PERSON. It literally blew my mind that she would have the chutzpah to do such a thing…

I mean, I can’t recall myself ever engaging myself in something as “heavy” yet hysterical, ridiculous and slapstick-meets-inspired-gallow-humor as this.

Dude, I’m on a roll…

Anyway, I’ll be in the city for at least one “procedure” every week for at least the next three months, so we should definitely “do lunch” or coffee or what not…

one of the doctors who helped with the surgery came to me just as I was leaving the hospital with my sister. He said a major ruckus ensued when the guys who looked at the x-rays after surgery (they take ‘em to make sure they didn’t fuck up) noticed a big empty space in the lower torso!

Calls were going back and forth between the office underlings of Dr. Mediport, Dr. Spleen, Dr. Blood/Chemo, and a whole bunch of other folks in both the NYU Medical Center, where the surgery is done, and the NYU Cancer Center, where the doctors have their offices.

“What’s going on? Why is there a big empty space there? Good god! Somebody stole this poor bastard’s spleen! Who would do such a thing? HOW did they do such a thing? Are WE liable?”

It ended when this doctor, whose name also happens to be Adam, came out of surgery and said as calmly as he was able to, “Maybe there’s an empty space in this guy’s gut because of the splenectomy he had two weeks ago. That would kind of make sense, wouldn’t it?”

Sometimes I wonder, especially with my studies of the importance of hierarchy in complex systems (i.e. computer languages), whether this “mode of ordering things” isn’t an absolute necessity in…complex systems (i.e. bureaucracies). Until this Dr. Adam, a “superior,” took the initiative to actually THINK, all these office bureaucrats, none of whom had any “hierarchical” relation to the other had no one to make the all important DECISION.

This is literally how Object Oriented Programming languages are set up. Each hierarchy of “classes,” beginning with the top-level, “Super Class” is independent of the other (called “types.” Unless you’re among class-members of the same “type,” you don’t have to “take no shit from nobody.” Hmm. Why does that sound familiar? ).

HOWEVER. The “Big Kahuna” at the top of all the program’s hierarchies, appropriately named “Self,” can send a message to the machine putting a halt to any “argument” between any two OBJECTS (lines of code) should it get in the way of “business as usual”…

Maybe the only way to end all hierarchies, is to end this damned civilization until there are only a bunch of “Self” Kahunas interacting on equal terms.

But that’s actually in contradiction with everything I’ve ever learned about art…or the natural world…

Maybe systems are doomed, if they are “successful,” to reach a point of complexity beyond their control, i.e. entropy, and simply collapse, or rather implode like stars until they become black-holes.

…just extraordinarily confused, terrified and unaware of who you actually are; hence, others are led to be similarly unaware.

I don’t believe Buddhism can help you unless and until you do some major self-analysis, which unlike “psychoanalysis” can be done in a matter of days or even hours.

I don’t believe Buddhism was created in anticipation of the chaotic, schizophrenic nature of the modern Western mind. 

The basis of Western philosophy (and psychology) is “know thyself;” hence, the dominant culture, religion and “authority machine” spend unfathomable amounts of time and energy convincing you to know anything but yourself.

Your Buddhist therapist would not be a therapist, rather simple Buddhist teacher or teacher of the nature of Buddhism and/or it’s relation to the mind, if this were not true…

I just do not think it’s a good idea for me to try to be “friends” or any other supposedly “mature” stuff like that — while at the same time risking a less-than-aware “Let’s get to know each other again” — while I’m programming myself to be, or at least imagine myself to be and hence appear to be, the Scourge of Lymphoma.

Appearance is indeed everything: not how we appear to others, but how we appear to ourselves, because how we imagine ourselves dictates how we appear  to others, or imagine to, and this is ultimately what makes one “confident and poised” or “insecure and anxious.”  The advertisers know this.  The big lie is the alleged counter-cultural/liberated propaganda that we are insecure or whatever because we are worried about “how we appear to others,” i.e. the surface layer covering the actual problem/solution…

Medicine Man: Do you have cancer in your family?

Patient: Uh…not that I know of.

Medicine Man: Well somebody left you a vast inheritance, cause there’s a shit-load of it in you!

Hmn. Looks like broccoli and blueberries ain’t gonna cut it.

Fortunately, my hematologist/oncologist, whom I’ve been with for ten years, is one of the shrewdest dudes in the country. I’m not supposed to be able to handle chemo cause of the whole blood/bone-marrow thing, but he came up with a concoction and a method of delivery, start slow, increase incrementally, that should do the trick. Gonna be a rough Spring: mass consumption of pills — I already got four different prescriptions and I’m not even supposed to start the whole shebang for another week or so. Gonna need a lot of transfusions, which means not only chemo, but that “chemo-lite” crap that cleans the iron outta my system and makes me sick. I told Dr. Blood/Cancer that what with all this high-tech chemical warfare I was gonna go broke buying pot, cause I’ve tried that “fake pot” THC pill shit and it zones you out and makes you twice as sick the next morning, but he said there was this other stuff that works better than pot — and insurance covers it. In fact, it’s in one of the bottles I brought home from the hospital pharmacy. I’m pretty nauseous now anyway cause of the surgery, but the bottle said the stuff gives you head-aches, and this whole thing is a big fucking head-ache, so I think I’ll wait till the chemical war-fare begins in earnest.

This would all actually be kind of exciting if I wasn’t so hung-up about croaking before I finish my “magnum opus.” So I said, flat out, “I NEED THREE YEARS.” And he said something to the effect of “Three years? I’m talking about a possible cure, or at least a serious remission.”

And I said, “Three years, at least. Preferably five. More is okay, but not less.”

He seemed pretty confident Big Medicine could deliver the goods. And I’ve been with this guy for ten years and one trip to the End Zone. He’s a straight shooter, as is Moira, the RN, who writes prescriptions and deals with the hematologists and oncologists like a colleague, not an “assistant.” So I don’t get why she’s just an “RN” and not a “Doctor.”

With all this crap zapping my cells, particularly blood and marrow, I was freaking out that I’d miss out on four months of work — deep into LISP, Smalltalk, starting to understand the shit; couldn’t program a line if my life depended on it, but that was never my intention to begin with; also been writing some unrelated (to the The Project) but hilarious shit, mostly in the form of emails, that at least keeps me amused.

But there’s actually little likelihood of me “falling asleep at the wheel,” cause they’re raising my prednisone from the nerve-jittering 5 mg/day to 60 mg/day, which defines you — medically or legally, I forget — as psychotic. So I think everything should balance itself out and I’ll be able to continue plowing through LISP and Smalltalk and other programming mysteries while churning out the “amusing anecdotes and belle-lettres.”

I keep this private “blog” that I use essentially as an external hard-drive, in case my place burns down or something, which is where I put this shit for storage. One of them, “Third Trip to the Endzone,” I subtitled (In Search of Doctor Furhman) cause now that he’s a big-shot tv star, you know he’s got his own custom designed Google engine scouring the web for mention of his name.

Sure enough, one of his secretaries/PR people/underlings/whatever wrote me the next day that she read my piece, showed it to Fuhrman and they were very much “interested in my story and ‘journey’ (I hate that corn-ball modern jargon). So I talked to her on the phone — Stephanie; she sounded really cute; Pennsylvania girl; Fuhrman moved his operation from New Jersey to Philadelphia, god knows why — and she said Furhman told her to talk to me and find out what’s what. I told her about how the whole mass consumption of beans, greens and fruit lowered my transfusion rate from one every 3-5 weeks to one every 5-6 months, and I’d release my medical records to Furhman to prove it.

Tick-tock, says the clock. Tick-fucking-tock.

Communique by medical personnel confirm: Despite cession of the Spleen to rebel insurgents as a “good faith gesture,” Free Radicals continue to agitate, refuse to cease and desist from dealing illegal enzymes to support terrorist activity, and openly flout ASE demands.

The Body of Adam Stephen Engel (ASE) is now under Martial Law and will remain so until victory is achieved, the Free Radicals subdued, eliminated, banished. Every healthy cell is subject to serve in the military forces headed by Chief of Staff, General Rufus Cranium, of ASE multicellular forces. Any cell refusing such service, for whatever reason, will be executed without trial or ceremony.

A total ban on sugar, chemical additives and all processed foods will be maintained while ASE, reeling from this surprise attack but eager to pursue this war to its bitter conclusion, arms for engagement and drafts and trains anti-oxidents from the relatively close and stable apples and oranges, Kale, broccoli and spinach, to such exotic fighting forces as turnips, kumquats, rutabagas and Albanian parsnip.

All manner of leafy green vegetables, squash, tubers and all variety of fruits, legumes and whole grains are encouraged to enlist and serve the body politic.

Highly trained Chinese Herbs and other Special Forces will participate as crucial components of this mass engagement.

General Cranium’s overall strategy relies heavily on deep concentration, imagination and will: rugged anti-oxident commandos, drafted from the lean, hard country of kale, collards and bok choy, trained in the arts of Chinese herbal warfare during intense boot-camp and special ops mobilization drills, will surge forth as Grant’s wave upon wave of Union soldiers washed over Lee’s South, drowning The Confederacy and it’s inhabitants in the blood of their own perdition.

Casualties? Eat more fruits and veggies, induct more recruits, train them in the ancient Chinese herbal arts and send them in to murder the damned “Free Radicals” one by one. Mass extermination. Radi-cide. Every Free Radical must die. The system will be cleansed. Order must be imposed and maintained. Only then can we as an organism be truly free.

“War is Hell,” said Sherman. To which Grant added, “Yeah, a HELL of a lotta fun!”

Asked for comment, General Rufus Cranium’s terse reply was, “Onward!”

I’ve only known two “homes” in my life time — certainly not the linoleum and brick-a-brack upper-middle-class long Island house I grew up in: my grandmothers/great-aunts/uncles apartments in Queens and Brooklyn, and Bonita’s parent’s house in Englewood, NJ. The place where Bonita lives and lived for 11 years and went back to frequently — and now in our reconciliation phase, visit weekly — was actually an attachment that they used to rent to boarders. We were literally living a hallway away from her folks.

The first day I set foot in there I felt something I hadn’t felt since I was a kid. I literally uttered, “Grandma,” and when they asked, explained what I meant.

The Rutiglianos are the Italian version of the Rosenbergs, my mother’s maiden name. Huge family of uncles, great uncles and aunts and cousins etc. Every holiday they all gather at John and Phyllis’s — Bonita’s parents — just as the Rosenbergs did at Rubin and Elsie’s — my grandparents.

And except for the language — Italian instead of Hungarian, Polish, Yiddish — and the food (similar folksy, but admittedly better on the Italian side) I could not tell the fucking difference. I literally honestly truly could and still cannot tell the difference between a Xmas or Thanksgiving dinner at the Rutiglianos and a Passover or Thanksgiving dinner at the Rosenbergs. That explains it about as best as I can.

However, visiting Bonita’s brother, John, a nouveau riche son of this, as my father was, is very much like visiting the home I grew up in. “There isn’t any there there.”

I grew up on paprika, the Hungarian “national spice.”  Paprika on everything. There was, allegedly, “mild” paprika, “sweet paprika,” “spicy paprika,” “hot paprika,” and “burn-the-roof-of-your-mouth paprika.” 

It all tasted the same to me: red. 

Until my grandmother took me shopping to the Hungarian specialty store and explained to me the niceties of each different “strength” of paprika as the Bela Lugosi-look-alike shop-keeper looked on, proud of his ample, variegated stock, I thought it was just flavorless garnish.  In fact, it was just flavorless garnish.  These people were hypnotized by some regional/national myth.  I believe that they believed that they were actually tasting variety from what I assume to be the same batch of red powder doled out in different cans with Hungarian and English words for “hot,” “spicy,” “sweet,” etc.

In fact, I once saw a “human interest story” segment of the local news in which a reporter went around to various “ethnic” shops, tasting their wares, and was warned by the guy who owned the Hungarian shop that she should be careful before sampling the paprika she was about to taste because it was extremely hot.  She replied that she grew up on habaneros or whatever and she could take it.  So, he doled out the paprika, smiling to his colleagues as if to say “she don’t know what she’s fucking with” and the woman said: “I don’t get it. This isn’t hot. It has no taste at all, really.”  I remember I was sitting on a couch with my girlfriend. I howled.  The guy and his fellow Hungarians were mortified. Not embarrassed, as I kind of was, even though vindicated, on the other side of the screen, just honestly shocked that this woman wasn’t coughing and wheezing and begging for cold water.   Such is the power of what you might call cultural schlock.

Perhaps the origins for my quest for the hottest of hot peppers, or simply words that tell the truth?

It occurs to me in this my — yikes! — 47th and perhaps final year, that  I was NEVER a “Jew.”  Ever.  I was, am and ever will be, a “Yid.”

 

I used to joke around, as an adult, that I was Siouxish, but that of course can never be more than a joke unless I actually went out west, learned Lakota, learned the Sioux way of life and lived it, which ain’t gonna happen.

 

From earliest youth I remember hating and fearing “god,” until I was fortunate enough, at age ten, to befriend a kid whose parents were both psychiatrists and “evangelistic atheists,” and was quickly and thankfully “converted.” Going to “Synagogue” twice a year on the “High Holy Days” was my first lesson in arrant hypocrisy, begun roughly at age seven or eight, and Hebrew school was a punishment so great, so excessive that it actually beat out Summer Camp as my major “I don’t get it, why are we doing this? Why would anyone force me to do this kind of shit against my will?” line of questioning which led in due course to mistrust, fear and finally utter hatred of power, “tradition” and illegitimate authority.

 

Of course, being an early student of Monty Python, I became well aware of the fact that “If you can’t beat ‘em…Run away! Run away! Run away!” And runaway I did. Going off for long days of glorious solitude in the mountains after having gone AWOL from the summer camp I was forced to attend, only to return to find that – oh good heavens, no! – I was an out-law, a “bad little boy,” and my punishment would be…excommunication! I would NEVER be allowed in that particular Summer camp again (boo-hoo)!

 

Same with Hebrew school. With my Bar Mitzvah set for December, I began to “vanish” from Hebrew school just before the starting bell – especially on gorgeous fall afternoons when, having spent the day in “real school” (I totally understood the concept of “real school,” i.e. to teach us to read, write, do math, etc. though I was far too young to understand the sinister motives behind it all; that’d have to wait till high school), it absolutely boggled my mind that we would have to blow the rest of the day – we got out of school early, 2:15, then, when I was in the seventh grade – in order to pretend to learn some bullshit foreign language from 4:30 – 7:30 twice a week.

 

There was the rub. Pretend. They had us from age eight to thirteen. MORE than enough time to teach such impressionable minds both Hebrew and Yiddish. They opted for neither. The twice-a-week lock-downs were divided into two sessions: Hebrew and History. Hebrew was taught phonetically, so we would be able to read the syllables and pronounce them correctly on that “special day” when we’d be “called to the Torah” (even the girls; it was a reform synagogue, Temple Or Elohim. The Jericho Jewish Center down the road however – I grew up in Jericho, Long Island — was conservative, but not VERY conservative: girls could be Bat Mitzvahed; they just couldn’t read from the sacred Torah. And they had to go to “Hebrew” school three times a week!).

 

The second session, Jewish History, began with the expulsion of Abraham from Ur, continued through several thousands of years of pain, persecution, segregation, alienation and utter misery, but had a very happy ending: the erection of the State of Israel! Now, ALL Jews could be “safe,” wherever they were (yeah, like those Soviet Jews got sprung from the gulag as soon as Eretz Israel gave Moscow the cold stare). But there was one problem: poor, little, scrappy, democratic, free, life-loving Israel was surrounded by HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF ARABS who lived on huge tracts of land which, as the map did indeed show, made Israel seem like a grape on the back of an elephant by comparison.

 

And what’s worse, the MAIN PROBLEM was the greedy, unreasonable Palestinians and the equally selfish OTHER ARABS who lived on these huge land masses – see ‘em on the map! – but wouldn’t let the Palestinians just live THERE, and the Palestinians didn’t want to live on all that land, where everyone owned their own oil field, just out of spite and meanness and anti-semitism. So poor Israel was not only surrounded by huge enemies, “she” had enemies living in her very own cities: the PLO, otherwise known as “terrorists,” who blew up little Jewish children as they took their afternoon naps in kindergarten.

 

Fortunately, the Arabs were stupid, weak, cowards, and the Israelis were brave, brilliant, industrious ubermenschen who “made the dessert bloom” and took “some old spare parts” from the U.S. Military and built high-tech tanks, planes, uzis and other anti-terrorist paraphernalia.

 

Blah blah blah.

 

Finally, after a month and a half of playing hooky (my friend would say, whenever the “teacher” would ask where I was, “He’s out buying a Bar Mitzvah suit”) I penned a letter accusing my “teacher” and the whole fucking place of racism – not cause of the Israel thing, I bought that hook line and sinker, but because they claimed that Jews were “smarter” than all other people – hypocrisy, stupidity, perversion (the rabbi ran off with some young congregant, then went into real-estate, sending pitch-letters to all his former congregants, etc.) and god knows what else. Of course this led to a “man-hunt” and this and that and the other thing and my parents and I had to meet with the principal of the Hebrew school – such awesome power; how could such a position fail to corrupt? – to discuss the fact that my Bar Mitzvah was less than two weeks off and I missed the entire “semester” of Hebrew school and hadn’t met once with the rabbi or cantor to study the section of the torah I was supposed to pretend to read and chant with the proper accents and inflections.

 

“Frankly, I don’t think you DESERVE a Bar Mitzvah!” said the Principal. Are ALL of these folks dumb as toast? I couldn’t believe I’d heard him right. Was he offering me what the Summer camp people gave me, a discharge – dishonorable, honorable, who cares, as long as I’m free? – from the prison I so despised?

 

Alas, no. It was his attempt at a rhetorical device, allegedly meant to shame me or something. When I literally sprung outta my chair and said, “Excellent! I don’t want one. I NEVER wanted one!” and my father gave him his “first I’ll kick your ass for stealing five years of ‘tuition,’ then I’ll sue your ass for stealing five years of ‘tuition’” stare, the guy backed down.

 

My father, who though on their side, was a big-shot CEO on Wall Street with, like everyone else in the Jericho-Old Westbury-Brookville area (model for the Long Island home of Don Corleone), access to certain “unsavory business and personal connections” and not to be fucked with, gave me a choice worthy of King Solomon: get Bar Mitzvahed, and except for the high holy days twice a year, I’d never have to deal with a synagogue again, OR spend the rest of my junior high and high school years in Military School.

 

The almighty Principal of the Or Elohim Hebrew school began to look tinier and tinier; I was afraid he’d literally sink into one of the cracks in his chair.

 

So, I met with the Cantor once, got a tape of him doing the section I was supposed to read, got a print-out of the section I was supposed to “read” phonetically – both with and without vowels; modern Hebrew has vowels, but the Hebrew of the Torah did not. They never taught us this shit. But I suppose giving me two versions was supposed to help me “cheat” a little. I needed neither version. I simply memorized the goddamned tape. When the day of my “Shotgun Bar Mitzvah” arrived, I dutifully recited the Hebrew I could not understand and pretended to follow along as the rabbi moved his silver pointer across the lines of the Torah I was allegedly reading. My one small act of rebellion, which did not go unnoticed, was to look up at the ceiling as I was reciting from memory until the rabbi – a different one than the real estate huckster – elbowed me in the ribs. Well that was presumptuous of him. How did HE know I hadn’t memorized the whole damned Torah? Luckily I was a long-confirmed atheist, cause if I thought there was some mean, vengeful, jealous god actually listening to my ass-kissing recital (I assume it was kissing his ass; isn’t that what prayers are for?) it might have crossed my mind that it was possible, not probable, but possible that the all-powerful creator of this, that and the other thing, might answer back, in Hebrew of course, and then I’d really be fucked.

 

Hmn. I just went off on a serious tangent. My actual intent was to say that all the stuff I loved about being “Jewish” had nothing whatsoever to do with the religion, DNA or anything but hanging out with my grand-parents, great-aunts and great-uncles, listening rapt as they switched effortlessly from heavily accented English, to Hungarian, to Polish, to Yiddish, to German and back again, and eating Hungarian stuffed cabbage, brisket and potatoes, Chicken Paprikasch, Chicken soup, grieven (fried chicken fat chips; like Jewish pork rinds), bagels lox and cream cheese, Jewish/Italian style cheesecake – which I’ve had at Bonita’s; totally different from the American stuff; light, made with ricotta or cottage cheese, and with a layer of pastry on top, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Basically, hanging out in a warm old house eating great food with a bunch of extremely well-read, polyglot, kindly old people. There was just one catch: they were, or had been…SOCIALISTS! It did indeed puzzle me why such a nice bunch of old folks would be on the side of the RUSSIANS who were ready to blow us up at any minute, but I let it go. I wasn’t gonna rat them out. Though my parents would get mighty uptight when they started talking that old time European JEW commie stuff…

 

I was never a “Jew” at all, not even close. I was, and I suppose am, a Yid. It was Yiddish culture – along with the other mostly Eastern European cultures and languages that existed in these old Queens and Brooklyn houses beside it, and the food – NONE OF WHICH CONTAINED EVEN TRACE ELEMENTS OF BABAGANOUSH (which I eat regularly but make no “ethnic” claim to) – and the socialism and intellectualism and general sense of welcoming – many of the guests were NOT Jewish: Italian, Irish and “other” neighbors invited in for food and holiday “celebrations” that were so informal it was hard to distinguish them from Thanksgiving – and most of all, the humor, the endless supply of jokes, anecdotes, and “yarns” made doubly comic by Yiddish, Polish, Hungarian, Brooklyn and Queens accents and malapropisms – all of this is what I recall with fondness and only this.

 

I’m a Yid, robbed of my cultural and linguistic heritage by Nazism, Zionism and American Empire.

 

Zionism? Bullshit! Americanism? Another passing fad. Judaism, i.e. the religion?  belongs with its children, Xtianity and Islam, in the Evil Racist Misogynistic Mythology Department at some under-funded, uncredited junior college way, way, way upstate, near Buffalo.

 

There’s more that our recent correspondence made clear, particularly relating to language (the very reason many orthodox and Hassidic Jews so despise Israel is that, like Rich, they betrayed the language. Hebrew is supposed to be the “sacred tongue,” spoken only in synagogue or “when the Messiah comes.” That’s why Yiddish exists – well, that and other more expedient, mostly commercial reasons, I suppose).

Power (specifically, US Empire, Israel, England) and rebellion against it must have something to do with why I am doing whatever the hell it is I’m doing with computer code and mostly European and Yiddish (though some Asian and Native American) vocabulary words.

 

Ethnicities and their celebration are cool, so long as it doesn’t go beyond the language, ethnic jokes and food, music, literature, etc. Once they start talking of “bringing back the great days of yore” or “purification” – regardless of the context, it’s time to fight like hell, if you’ve a chance of winning, or “Run away! Run away! Run away!”