Well, I’m having my uterus ripped from my bloody body tomorrow morning, so I’m going to be out of touch for awhile. (Nothing new, since a rotator cuff injury has kept me out of touch for awhile anyway.) I will let you know if they let me keep the organ. My hopes are not high!
As you may recall, earlier this year I followed the decline and death of British reality star Jade Goody religiously, fascinated at her emotional exhibitionism at allowing the most vulnerable and painful time of her life to be captured by the cameras. When the cancer eventually extinguished her life, I was sad but also disappointed that I couldn’t take part in her journey any longer.
Enter Farrah Fawcett. I have never really held much opinion one way or the other for Farrah, except I thought she was a bit of a wack-job based on that Letterman interview from a few years back. However, when I heard that she had been having a friend film her battle with terminal cancer and that the documentary was set to be shown, I was immediately captivated. The documentary ran the other night and if you missed it, as I did, you can watch it online (link below). I can say that, having watched it, I now have a very high opinion of her and I also am genuinely saddened at her plight. The documentary shows her undergoing unanesthetized procedures that I only hope I never have to endure, and handling them with strength. She keeps fighting long after I would have tossed in the towel, and she seems incredibly well-grounded for a celebrity.
There is something so moving and fascinating about joining along in someone else’s journey from life to death, and wondering how you would cope if the same situation were to happen to you. Far from being exploitative, I think taking part in such journeys make us better people by reminding us of the short flicker of time that we have here on earth, and prodding us to make better use of it while we’re here. I am always grateful for people like Jade and Farrah for allowing us to join them on that very difficult journey. Since yesterday would have been my mother’s 80th birthday, had cancer that metastasized to her liver not claimed her life 5 1/2 years ago, there was a special sting in watching Farrah’s liver scans provide grim news about her survival prospects. Cancer is, indeed, a formidable foe.
If you haven’t watched the documentary, you can view it online here:
Farrah’s Story
So I found out recently that I need to have my disease-ridden, malfunctioning uterus ripped out of my body. In one sense, I’m actually quite pleased to part ways with the unpleasant organ since I have absolutely no interest in procreation whatsoever (and we’ll say nothing about my advanced age). To be finished with it will be a relief.
However, in another way, I do NOT want to part with the organ at all! In fact, I would love to pickle it in a jar and display it with my other curios. And I’m distressed because I just know they won’t let me! They’ll say something about needing to do pathology tests on it to rule out cancer blah blah blah – as if they couldn’t take a look at it then give it back to me! And they will probably think I’m certifiable for even asking… which is true, but that’s beside the point. Shouldn’t I be able to keep my own organ if I want to? It just seems so unfair!
But I am grateful, at least, that I’m not having this particular surgery done (though it would be fun to make small children cry… oh, what am I saying? I do that already):
(Thanks to Katchaya for the link.)
Due to unpopular demand, I have started a Twitter page. I am sure you are rapt with anticipation. Come join the misery!
MoxieHart posted a follow-up to the April 28th Morbid Fact regarding the “Year Without A Summer” that I wanted to make sure nobody missed. Rasputina have a song entitled “1816: The Year Without A Summer” that has an awesome video created by Dr. Mangor and Dame Darcy. Excellent viewing, and educational too!
I am in the midst of a week-long visit with my family in Catatonia, and I’ve decided to do a photo project with the Holga to document my life here. I went to my old Elementary School yesterday to take some shots and it was a MOST disillusioning experience. About the only thing that remained from my youth were the fields, asphalt, and buildings. All of the things that mattered most to me – that I REALLY wanted to photograph – were gone. The rocketship shaped jungle jim? Gone. The Semi-Circle jungle jim? Gone. The swingset? Gone. The cement ditch that we used to jump over? Filled in. The huge oak tree that we used to play under? Gone. The playset where Debbie Dwight accidentally knocked the little girl down and broke her arm? Gone. The pillars that we used to sit on every lunch period in 6th grade? Gone. The tetherball court? Gone. Most of them, I’m sure, removed due to lawsuit fears. “That tree might fall down on a kid one day – we better chop it down… We can’t have jungle jims anymore, they are too dangerous, especially on asphalt… Some kid tripped and fell in that ditch – we better fill it in… Some kid might fall from those pillars – better remove them…” etc.
When I was a kid, we had high swingsets that were set in gravel. We used to be able to swing so high in the air that the chains jerked as we started to descend. Then, when we were at our highest point, we could launch ourselves and soar through the air, before landing in the gravel. Nowadays, the swingsets are much shorter, the maximum height much smaller, and the ground is soft rubber. Sure, kids these days won’t get as many skinned knees or broken arms, but I find it much more disturbing that they also won’t know what it’s like to fly, or triumph against the odds. We are breeding a generation of wusses thanks to the evil that is litigation… and something beautiful is being lost.
Walking through the school, I felt like I was viewing the wholesale destruction of my youth! I don’t have any photographs of that school to even commemorate what it once looked like, which is very distressing to me. Despite my disappointments, there was one nice moment when I strained to look through a dark window into the girls bathroom and saw that they still have the weird round sink in the middle of the room like in the good old days. At least one thing remained the same. Oh, and the floors in the school were still painted that strange gray color that I remembered. And there were still enough cedar trees in the front to give off that smell that to this day always takes me back to the school.
Maybe it’s true what they say – you can never go home again. When you’re away, the world moves on without you. I wonder what I’ll find at the Intermediate School and High School today?
Chad VanGaalen is a Canadian singer/songwriter who animates his own videos. This is a particularly lovely example.
You know, I had planned on updating this blog on a daily basis, but I’ve been so mind-numbingly depressed lately that everytime I sit down to do it, I just can’t cope. The only thing that keeps me sane when I’m depressed is music, so I’ve been listening to my favorite songs on shuffle, trying to keep myself at least stable enough so that I don’t start cutting again. When I feel like this, I am reminded of how music has saved my life time and time and time again. I’m sure many of you feel the same way. I started a series on my private Facebook page about the Albums That Saved My Life and thought I’d share some of my entries. I don’t usually get personal here, but what the hell… at least this way I’m posting something! I hope you find something of value from these ramblings…
Closer by Joy Division (1980)
I was always a melancholy child, but my depression became crippling in the 6th grade, when I stopped going to school for extended periods of time because I couldn’t cope with the realization that I was a freak. My desperation continued to worsen before it reached an absolute, molasses-like apex in 10th grade. It was around this time that I read a review of the last Joy Division album, Closer, in Rolling Stone. At first I thought “Joy Division” was the name of a female singer, but reading the article I realized it was a critically acclaimed British band whose lead singer, Ian Curtis, had committed suicide the year before. Instant fascination!
I immediately rushed out to buy the album with my $7.50/week allowance. (It was actually my lunch money, but I starved myself all day so I could use every cent for records and magazines.) I was immediately impressed by the quality of the packaging: nice, heavy, textured cardstock with a gorgeous black and white photograph of a deathbed vigil and marvelous typography. The packaging had no “side one” or “side two” listed, so I started by listening to what I later found out was side two – one of the most mournful and majestic sides of music ever created: “Heart and Soul,” “Twenty Four Hours,” “The Eternal,” and “Decades”. These songs became the soundtrack of my suicidal years filled as they are with some of the most desolate lines in the history of popular music: “Existence, well what does it matter?/I exist on the best terms I can/The past is now part of my future/The present is well out of hand.” I would sit in my room and play the bass line to “Twenty Four Hours” on my guitar, and imagine that I had written the song. Well, I could have written the song. The emotions were mine.
… A cloud hangs over me, marks every move
Deep in the memory of what once was love
… Just for one moment thought I’d found my way
Destiny unfolded – I watched it slip away
… Just for one moment heard somebody call
Looked beyond the day in hand – there’s nothing there at all
Now that I’ve realized how it’s all gone wrong
Gotta find some therapy – this treatment takes too long
Deep in the heart of where sympathy held sway
Gotta find my destiny before it gets too late
In one of my many efforts to get my parents to take my mental problems seriously (cuts on my arms were another, more enduring, example), I started writing these lyrics and posting them all over my bedroom walls. At the height of my desperation, I even wrote suicide notes that contained some of these lines in my own blood (though I didn’t post those). It took a few days, but my mother finally asked me about the lyrics and if I was feeling those emotions. Even though I desperately wanted to talk about it, I chickened out at the last second and said, “No, not at all – those are just some of my favorite lyrics.” My mother told me that I shouldn’t listen to that music because it was making me depressed. She didn’t understand that I listened to that music because it expressed my own depression better than anything else ever could. Better, even, than The Bell Jar.
Closer is the soundtrack of years spent in a dark bedroom, crying in despair, cutting myself and hating myself, and trying desperately to hold on for the promise of something better in the future, fearful that the day would never come. Its power is immense.
Here’s another in my series of morbid songs that come up on shuffle. If you’ve seen the excellent film The Basketball Diaries, you’re probably familiar with the classic 1980 Jim Carroll Band song “People Who Died”. If you aren’t, well, why not have a listen?
