"Mind you, they took a pint of puss out of that lovely young body of hers."

 me:  what happened? you ok?

 Tim: the dr cut me open

         with a scalpel and numbing spray, but it didnt do too much

         then he started squeezing out the pus

         it took almost 10 mintues to drain it all

         towards the bottom of it, there was a lot of pain

         it even forced me to scream and sweat

         then he said there were cysts

         he said that i may want to consider surgery to get them out

         but, he thought he could get them. however, it would be very painful

         so, he squeezed and worked a lot of the cyst out

 Tim: it was basically the same as a surgery, but he didnt put me under and there were no drugs.

 me:  holy shit

         that's insane

         seriously,

         how did that thing even get there?????????

         I could never have gone through that.

         how much puss came out?

 Tim: i dont know but they took a specimen to find out exactly what it was. they said they
          should know by monday when i have to go back and see how everything is going

          there was way more pus then you would even think bc it was hidden deep in there too

          when it shrunk, none of the pus left me, so it was probably enough to fill the big lump i had

 me:  whoa

         is it still a lump?

 Tim:i was screaming and sweating when he was doing it. im sure everyone there was freaked
         out there's nothing there really, except for a three inch incision that needs to be covered
         for a little while

 me:  whoa

         that's madness

         serious madness

 Tim:  it was a horrible pain. the scene probably looked pretty 19th century

           the only tools were a box of gauze, a scalpel, and the dr pulling shit out of my body

 me:  oh my God.

 Tim:  i feel better now though

 me:  was the doctor surprised about how big it had gotten?

 Tim:  yeah, he was shocked. the same nurse was there and she was horrified by the whole scene

         the dr said it was far from their daily routine
 me:  was the doctor freaked out

 Tim:  no, he kind of liked it

           i pointed that out and we both laughed about it

           then i told him "well, if you didnt think that was fun you wouldnt be a doctor"

           he admitted that that was true

 me:  this reminds me of Salinger in Zooey

         when Buddy is taking the plane to Florida to get Seymour's body, and he is behind a veil, 
         crying hysterically on the airplane.

         as the plane was about to land, he overhears this well-to-do woman, in this upper class
         Boston accent,
         "Mind you, they took a pint of puss out of that lovely young body of hers."

         And Buddy got off the plane smiling when he met Seymour's awful wife, Muriel, and she
         was dressed like the Bereaved Widow, and he was wearing the Wrong Expression.

         But he was the one that was really mourning, even though it was all wrong.

 Tim:  that sounds very similar

 me:  I don't think there is any other way to extract so much puss without being archaic.

 Tim:  i dont think so either. the most painful part was the cyst

           i got myself a cookie afterwards as a reward

 me:  what kind of cookie?

 Tim: oatmeal raisin from circle k. i also got you an orange vitamin water bc they had them in
          stock

 me:  man, you're sweet.

 Tim:  not as sweet as you

fugazi: i'm so tired set to bergman's seventh seal

seems appropriate.

i woke up at 4a yesterday and today. i'm beat. yesterday night, we went to the emergency room because Tim was in pain, and we still had not received any results. they were nice, and they told us exactly what my research had been: either cat scratch fever or lymphoma, though they said hodgkin's lymphoma, and told us to get a biopsy.

though i've been doing a tremendous bit of research since 4a, and i don't think it's hodgkin's because they checked certain areas of his body, particularly his hips, where nothing was wrong (i later learned in my research that 83% of patients have pain there). also, it isn't a lymph that is common to hodgekin's, which is a systematic disease that spreads from lymph to lymph, and generally begins in the neck, and there was nothing there either. also, a lymphoma mass is not painful, and Tim is in quite a bit of pain. also, without showing us the results, the initial doctor told us that Tim had a high white blood cell count. seeing the charts, the normal person is 11.5, and Tim is 11.7. that's no great cause for harm. so truly, i can say that dude was a dick. he saw a young dude like Tim go in there, referred from a walk in clinic, and sent him to the hospital then cancelled his appointment on Friday and refused to call back with the results. when we would call there, no one knew who the hell Dr. Sellman was. i think everyone who has had to deal with medical issues has a story like this. my family has a million from what my dad went through, maybe starting with that weird experimental surgery they thought they were doing because they thought my dad was some goon with intestines that were doing something they'd never seen before. turns out, my dad was just some goon who let his colon burst days before, and decided to just sit in his chair, in silence, and deal with it. what a goon. 

anyway, there are other things that cancel out hodgekin's, so i feel pretty confident in all of that. but i don't think it's cat scratch fever either. only because our little animal, Layla, 

has never cut Tim too deep. i mean, she would have had to rip into that flesh solid for all of that to happen, and that has never happened. i think it's just an infection. but i am not a doctor, which is funny because lately i feel like being a doctor is like being a weatherman. in these experiences in the past few years, i've realized that medicine is so ridiculously archaic, and doctors only function through a process of events that they test then mark off of the list. even when Tim had to get a sonogram of his arm, even though they realized, right away, that it wasn't a blood clot, they still had him on the table for 45 minutes to map his track of veins in his entire left arm. nuts. people are nuts. in conclusion, i think being a run of the mill, basic hodge podge take-this-pill doctor is pretty damn easy. easier than getting a doctorate in literature. everything the doctor's said i had already learned through research. 

maybe i'm a witch doctor. putting my faith in medicine is equivalent to putting my faith in church: i believe in God, i believe in the human will, heart and body, and especially the mind, but there are very few people that i think are capable of intervening between the two. not to say that it isn't possible, but like Tim's strange extra veins and extra branching arteries, which we saw while he was on the sonography table for 45 min, and make him appear bionic from the inside, it can occur, but it's highly unlikely.

on humanness and symbols.

this has been one insanely tough week. aside from everything else that's keeping me busy, i'm really worried about Tim. a few weeks, ago, Tim noticed a tightness in his arm pit and then a lump started to develop. I tried and tried to get him to go to a doctor, but he wouldn't. he was in such excruciating pain, that finally, at 1a on Wednesday, he said he would go to the doctor. he saw two doctors, and neither would touch the lump or tell him anything, so they sent him to the hospital and told him that he may have to stay there. that made me scared, so I cancelled my classes, made Tim a bag lunch, and went there too. he had a sonogram, and they ruled out a blood clot / anurism, but they discovered that it is his lymph nodes. he took a blood test, and we left, but then they called him an hour later and had him take two more blood test in the cancer unit. we are still waiting for the results. all we know is that hopefully it's an infection, but he has a lot of white blood cells in his blood stream, which scares me because he has all of the signs of lymphoma. he's not eating, he's itchy, he has headaches, and his lymph nodes are the size of a gold ball. hopefully, it's just an infection and it will go away with antibiotics, but we still don't know. all these signs are the signs of cat scratch feveer too, but without knowing anything, I can't make a plan, so I feel vulnerable, and I can't deal with that.

this whole time, he tells me he's okay; he smiles and pretends to be okay, but his eyes are heavy and he's dizzy, and it makes me cry because I am so worried. ever since we got married, I wake up in the morning sometimes and think I dreamed Tim. and I'm scared; that feeling terrifies me now. he's not himself, and I don't know what to do to make it better. I don't know what to do at all. Tim says it is the pain killers and the antibiotic that he is on, but I always think the worst, and I know it is something I have to stop doing. Tim says I do it because I've never felt protected, not even when I was small. even if this is the worst thing ever, Tim just sees it as something to overcome. nothing defeats him. he laughs and says that if he ever felt defeated, then he would have never have gone after me. and that makes me cry because I can't imagine that. and he makes me feel better.

when Tim and I first started dating, I would have panic attacks. I've never let myself be attached to someone before, and I knew Tim was that someone it would happen with, and it scared me. I didn't want to lose myself, but what actually happened it that I was able to grow as a person, become more centered and more versatile, which led me back to writing. never once have I ever thought about losing Tim. he's been that larger than life figure for me, until this moment. and now I look at him, and I know he's human. knowing that he's human is putting me into a tailspin.  I know that sounds nuts, but think about it. we meet people we fall madly in love with, and even in that suspended state, even if that state is for years and years, we never think about the other's humanness. we think about our own; we think about our appearance, our appeal, our health, our dreams; we consider the other's desires, needs, body, mind, heart, but we never think about being human. right now, when I look at Tim and I talk to him and touch him, I think about him being human and me being human. I think about the things I've lost before and didn't love so much and how bad those things hurt, then I start to memorize things about Tim, things I already know by heart; I catch myself memorizing things as not to forget, like they won't happen again, and I have to go to my closet for a minute and breathe and find my center and remember my perception is not the truth. but still.  

when I came home from work today, a baby turtle left the big lake behind my apartment and was going to the parking lot, and when he hit the curb, he flipped on his back, and he couldn't flip back over. so when I came home and parked, I screamed because I thought he was dead because he was being eaten by a million fire ants. be he was being eaten alive. his little legs were flailing everywhere, so I flipped him over and he ran, and I ran upstairs to get a pitcher of water to get the ants off of him. I went back, in no more than 25 seconds, and looked for him. I looked for him for 15 minutes and couldn't find him anywhere. I went back inside. it's been thundering and lightening for an hour, but there is still no rain. that poor turtle is doing something, but there is no water. I drowned the ants that we left after he ran, but there was nothing else I could do. and it's still not raining. I told Tim I think this is a symbol. he says everything is a symbol, especially if you're looking for them.

like a patient etherised upon a table

since my father had surgery, it has never become more apparent to me how outrageous the fragility of ties between people can actually be. it is also something to unveil the things we hide from one another, because once we know, once we look across the room and say the words we have hidden in our hearts, once every syllable swallows all the white light and shallow reaches between us, it does not even appear close to half as worse as the comings and goings that have taken hold of the transparency of our days.

when my mother leans against her wardrobe door in the morning, looking completely separate from the face she makes for the world, and i stand there bedraggled, pretending i slept through the night and that the holes in my father's stomach dont terrify me, that all those pink organs and healing scars dont keep me awake, that the idea that he has to go back on that cold table in six weeks and be ripped apart again, pretending that his body isnt the most gruesome testament to mortality ive ever seen, and that its really lovelovelove or something else that keeps me up at night, pretending that the night was fine and that i am off to work and to school, telling her not to worry, that this isnt our life. not yet at least. because if this ever comes close to resembling life, after everything has come so close to the grave after we have to keep thinking that the worst is over but it gets worse and we prepare a face to meet the day, after all that, there is still everything else.


if i could have the world all over again, i would like every night to be dark blue and round and full, i would like the stars to be bright white light and the air to smell like jasmine and to not even think that this must be what a dream is like because a dream and death and anything else would be so much greater than the wear of our bodies and tired wanderings. i would never like to have to hear people yelling in dark rooms and looking at the walls, staring at everything else but every other design of skin and bones and heart. i still cant figure out why we hurt each other.

and aside from all of the pain, my father walking around with his insides out, propped on my great uncle joe's walking cane, making his lists and making his money and wandering around talking all the same noise and keeping up the same hustle, while my mother follows behind like a crow, making sure he doesnt fall apart from the inside out while she keeps the sky from collapsing just over his head.

and love has to be the strangest, most outrageous, most ridiculous thing of all. seeing my mother curled up in a hospital chair for eight days, while my larger than life father lay there grey and crying and her knowing, just knowing that he cant die. my brother and i walking into the rooms and just collapsing

because my father is silent and stuffed with tubes and pumps and lines pulling the toxic out and moving the cold lines of nutrients in. finally seeing that my father is human like the rest of us is the worst part.

and after all this, the strangest part is how remarkably together i feel. the way ive found this form and function that i have wanted for years and all of the death and rage and indifference in me has all but gone into the glass prisms of my heart, hidden away and reflecting the worst on each other and it's no matter because it isn't a part of me. lately everything seems like technicolor like no day is hum drum like no day goes by forgotten or stagnant. that every moment is filled with some sort of time and movement and beauty. that even the worst parts in life are beautiful because of the way everything must disappear. and our chronologies are not perfectly matched.

love has to be the most terrifying thing to live through because you know the world is so fragmentary and that we are just ghosts passing through and we hold on to one another with such force, with such tumbling momentum, that sometimes its true, sometimes the world just stops for us and lets us hold each other in breath and form and color and you never forget how that feels. ever.