The Sons of Thomas Magnum

2007-02-13T14:55:00.000-05:00

Through such deafening silence...

2006-04-20T18:15:00.000-04:00

Without so much as a word of context, here is the note I forwarded this past week to the kind folk at US Air. My intention is to write them one note per week detailing my increasing distemper at their inability to do the simple act we pay them to do. I am hoping I grow more and more angry, that my notes grow more and more weird, and that they never write me back. I'd hope they go out of business, as well, but as they are barely even in business, that seems a bit vindictive.

To whom it may concern,

I'm really unsure how to phrase this, but I'm sufficiently curious to at least try. I am, at present, sitting in my office in Boston, waiting for my girlfriend's flight to arrive at Logan. I do this every Thursday, as she is a consultant and travels frequently. Her firm uses your airline exclusively, and for the last seven weeks of her customer engagement, every single one of her return flights has been at least 30-45 minutes late. Last week and this week averaged one and one half hours. Out of curiosity, why is it that you are unable to limit flight delays to AT LEAST the duration of the flight itself? I've tracked these flights online, and the last two 1:30+ delays were caused by 'baggage handling' and 'cabin servicing'. Seriously? It takes an hour and a half to load the baggage for a 737? If that is true, please let me know, as I am somewhat concerned about you at the moment.

Yours,
Gavin

Modigliani on a Cigarette Boat

2005-11-22T10:28:00.000-05:00

Dude, I totally need a coffee. And a woman shaped like this...

Sunrise on Oahu, and the light of the grey day whispered between the blinds. Morning here is a sound I’ve heard a thousand times, that whisper that tells you the day has begun without you. It sneers at the corners of your eyes, sneers that somewhere in the Hawaiian morning, no matter the weather, something is very, very wrong with your Ferrari.

"Bastards," I mumbled, dragging a sleepy hand across my mustache. There were no stewardesses in the room, no Polynesian tour guides drowsing like honey under several strategically-placed pillows, and if that wasn't disorienting enough, Mr Fujikori was standing on my end table, beaming down on me with the highest watt smile a 65-lb man can muster.

"Mother of a Retarded Christ!" I shouted, but Fujikori was already shaking my hand, and before I could drag my unbelievably limber body from my 900 count sheets, he vanished, leaving nothing but a puff of green tea scented smoke, and a page torn from an address book.

819 Kahala Beach Road.

The tuning fork in my head shook like a new-hatched bird. 819 Kahala Beach Road.

I slipped into a polo (the wonderful white Burberry one with the fuschia cuffs and the embroidery on the button placket...but that is neither here nor there), a pair of short shorts that shouted 'Macho!' rather than 'Rent me by the hour!', grabbed my .45, and disappeared into the AM mists.

You still give me shivers

2005-10-03T14:31:00.000-04:00

You want to tell me what, huh? Dangerous boy. We jump out of planes now. Be a difficult woman or a dangerous man, because this side of the island has gone deeply weird, and you don't have the shoe size.

I really had to wonder though, standing in line with a thirty-page waiver in hand, having neither ceiling nor border. Gross negligence should never be on the table. But then maybe I think like an auditor now--since strangely that is all that I am now, keeping tabs--but an auditor who has been thoroughly digested by a year so shitty, hyperbole blanches in conversation. Jump from where? Just point. Here are my initials, you can have them. A dozen high school kids doing the admin. Or maybe they are in their twenties? Another thing, another good reason to take some chances, I can't read ages anymore, things is getting muddled.

And I am in the grips of a withdrawal you wouldn't fucking believe. I want car crashes. I want knife fights. I haven't heard a scream in six months. I haven't seen a fullgrown man fall on his knees and cry in six months. I haven't seen the readable end of drunk-driving in six months. I haven't had a stranger throw her arms around my neck in six months, haven't heard stories about uncles or wives or grandfathers or any other stupid, depressing thing in six months. I haven't watched a skull open from the inside, or an eyeball swell up in its socket, or an old man rattle his bed coughing all night with emphysema, or an old woman push away her family and walk down the hall, finally, totally and for always alone in her little house somewhere. Six months. No more children crying because their Dad was struck retarded late at night. No more stupid, ugly, horrific bullshit, sleeping in stairwells, on windowsills, in lobbies, on benches, everything smelling like shit and piss and vomit, smiling, smiling, and smiling some more, slipping downstairs for a cigarette and a few minutes to emote without adding to the pile of it all, no more being that alone. Now I get golf, and corporate work, and conferences, and a new taste for wine, and weddings to attend, but my body likes to shake now. It doesn't like all this anymore. I have a nervous system like a pitbull in a very narrow room.

So I jump out of planes now. Already scheduled for next month. You have a better idea? Yes, and this opinion of yours is based on what?

Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch, You Know That I Love You?

2005-07-20T09:40:00.000-04:00

Wait a tic, this stuff is slippery! No one told me...

Haleiwa. It was five AM, and the first rose of morning was flirting with me over the waves off Niihau. It was a beautiful sight, and like all beautiful sights, a dozen dangers hid themselves in...

Fuck it. I just wanted to mention the fact that it has been suggested in several media outlets that one of the selection criteria for the current Supreme Court nominee was a lack of documented 'decisions'. This presumably limits the traction of his 'detractors' in their uncivil attempt to denounce him based on his beliefs and policies. Fair enough.

Out of curiosity though--show of hands--how many people out there would want their morality shuffled into a court like a Greek in a big wooden horse? Anyone?

Poor lighting can be hilarious...

2005-07-05T13:03:00.000-04:00

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
-Henry Miller

The light was in good humor, is how I remember it. It could go either way. Like most tequilla-induced evenings, I am of two minds on it.

You know the way a room can be dark at night, and the shadows mellow evenly from corner to corner, so that nothing is too obvious or obscure? That is the signature of quality lighting. And we’d spent the afternoon staring at Sargent paintings at the MFA, Titian and the Flemish, with the light thrown on the figures like dropcloths, and definition and distinction in the visual arts are so depressing…

There was a wonderful Degas. In the foreground, an old woman sits with crossed hands. Her features are a miracle narrative, and you can read in the eyes—or in the lines around the eyes, or in the way they are set—how proud she is of her boredom, and how she insists on it. I believe she lived a good life. Probably, someone was sent to the market for her. She was probably one of these women who in their mid-twenties marry men fifteen years their seniors.

And I’ve heard her talk to her daughters. The thing is, my dear, that you avoid the unpleasantness of watching a man build his life, make decisions, doubt himself. You get to enter into the life of a finished and well-defined individual, and his pleasure is to avoid watching his girl watch him stumble, da-dee, da-dee.

She has a finished face, the old woman. The paint is crisp and the lines are deep, the shadowing more like a charcoal for a portrait to come. I wondered what the intention was, leaving the daughters off to the side, looking off to the side, and their faces smeared with a cloth, the features finished and then obscured? I wonder what they are thinking, although it probably won’t matter. The light was in good humor, I remember that much. What I mean is that it was dark, but it could go either way, I am of two minds on it.

Screwing Everything Up Is a Funny Way of Helping

2005-06-28T00:27:00.000-04:00

To commemorate my grandmother falling and breaking her hip—requiring surgery tomorrow—I propose a tale…

I heard a story once. The story was about a bear who wandered out of the woods. His location was a gated community in Ridgefield, Connecticut. His motivation: one of the new constructions was on fire. He stood, fascinated, wondering what possible difference the destruction of a fully insured five-bedroom home in suburban Connecticut would make, from the perspective of…well, of anyone. The contractor would call the owner. The owner would call State Farm. State Farm would make a few phone calls internally, schedule a meeting, and build a spreadsheet detailing the lost materials and labor costs. Another phone call would be made, and a check would be cut. Et cetera.

But if the wind blows the hat off a beggar...

When the bear had finished, he wandered off. Eventually he found his way into the swimming pool of an adjecent property. It made the local news.

I have a confession to make: there was no bear, and I was invited into the swimming pool. This is the entry, such as it is.

I Hate Laughing

2005-06-14T23:31:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry, I can't leave this be...what are those two talking about in the opening scene? What kinda game is that guy playing? Did this thing, for all its well-considered absence of restraint, actually improve the life of even a single mentally challenged human being?

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2667018

What were we talking about again?

2005-06-14T14:15:00.000-04:00

The other side speaks!

Excerpt from a response from General D. McArthur to G. Thomas Magnum, on the event in question...

Disaster? Yes, my boy, but to truly live, one must devour the broken custard.

This is some fetching nonsense, I will admit that. You have the conviction of a wailing woman--heard above the crowd--and I suppose your standard pedestrian would consider this admirable. You and I are familiars, however, and we both know I am not an apt correspondent on this issue, as it's a rare morning I stir to the sound of complaint and/or other pussified bullshit. You shouldn't have expected a quick response. I told you seven years ago to go to law school and swallow the consequences in your middle age, like all sensible men do. I will ask again: What, precisely, were you anticipating? That you would skim the raw and practical waters of adulthood--lofted on your own wind like some oblivious duck-winged imbecile--and come softly to rest somewhere in coastal New England? Was some dentist to make an honest housewife of you? Explain, please.

Fortunately for you, I've room in mind for your pointless cargo. Your father might have beaten this nonsense out of you at an early age, had he not been occupied with his occupation, which seems to have been the support and maintenance of a capering little jackass. But sit there, and I shall tell you a story. Let me set the scene. You are sitting, undoubtedly, on the deck of your rented apartment, smoking a $200-a-box cigar, and the whole of your attention turns on not ashing the thing on your $300 shoes. I will not ask the pointed questions--the ones you certainly know the answers to--questions like 'What do you feel you've done to deserve such things?' and 'What do these things do for you, in the end?' I simply ask that you continue reading, and that you compose for me, your own friend and correspondent, the message I intend.

Don't laugh, but once, long ago, in a forest where only the ancient hemlock kept the time, there lived a great chief, Wyandanch, master of the Abenaki peoples. This chief had a daughter, White Fawn, who was more beautiful than all the lands. Her voice was the sun on summer breezes; and her eyes all the birds in all the trees in her lovely Indian world.

Now, in Wyandanch's tribe there were many great warriors, strong men with arms like woven oak, and all of these warriors loved White Fawn. But there was also a disinterested brave, whose name is unrecorded--but let us name him Bartleby the Spoiled Yankee, for the sake of the narrative--and this disinterested brave loved White Fawn with a love far stronger than the strongest warrior, primarily because he didn't have a clue what he was letting himself in for. Do you see where I'm going with this? I doubt that you do. Probably you think this will be a Romance...

Though White Fawn was largely ignorant of our Bartleby, she was familiar enough with him to be startled by his appearance at the door of her father's longhouse. What store of courage buoyed this unlikely suitor, she wondered lazily to her pretty self, as the young and disinterested brave entered the granite regard of his Chief. What does he believe he will gain, and why does he believe he deserves it, having never fed so much as himself, and nevermind a family?

As you are likely realizing, my dear G. Thomas, these were the days of Tribal Wisdom, so we can assume that Bartleby knew these questions as well--knew them better than even White Fawn--and carried them so close to his heart that it was sometimes difficult for him to distinguish his own desires from their pressing insistence.

Things grow murkier from here. The Great Chief Wyandanch was impressed with this normally disinterested brave's courage, and immediately his thoughts ran to a grandson, to a potential heir. Afterall, Bartleby had entered his presence with little more than the conviction that this was certainly what the other fellows would do, if they hadn't already, and the Chief knew this. So, once the question was asked, Wyandanch drew himself up from his fire, and stretched his mighty right hand, strong like woven oak, and said 'You may have my daughter's hand, Bartleby, if you catch for me a certain fish, from a certain stream, which will appear only as the sun sets. But Bartleby, the stream where this fish will swim is in a haunted briar, and the ghosts of fallen warriors wail in its shadows, hunting the living.'

Prior to that day, Bartleby would certainly have declined, but on that day he found his love for White Fawn so strong that he was unable to conceive an alternate path, and so he accepted his Chief's challenge, and agreed to bring him this prize. And so he went to this certain stream the Chief had mentioned, and built a wicker weir from birch saplings, in order to snare the fish as it went past. And indeed the briar was dark, and indeed there was a strangeness to its shadows--an indeterminacy, say, although it is highly unlikely Bartleby would agree with our term.

Bartleby sat by this stream and waited. But as he sat, he noticed the shadows in the thorn bushes by the water, and he could not keep his eyes from the shadows in the thorns. His wicker weir was damaged, but he could not keep his eyes from the shadows in the thorns. The fish swam through the holes in the weir, but he could not keep his eyes from the shadows in the thorns, and when the sun set, and the moon rose full in the sky like a broad white face, the shadows extended out to meet him, and tore him to pieces.

You're thinking you know the point of this story, which only proves you haven't been listening these last few years...

All night Bartleby's blood flowed down that certain stream, until in the morning it came to a light-dappled pool, to where White Fawn, the Chief's beautiful daughter, had come to bathe her irrelevantly lovely body. In distinctly folkloric manner, White Fawn became pregnant with the child of a young brave she knew only in a somewhat tangential way, and when she died in childbirth, the Chief took the child--a boy--and raised him as the son and heir he had always been guilty of wanting.

G. Thomas, I forget what the point of my story is. It was a long time ago it was told to me, and it is now beyond my abilities to outline the thing, or to say THIS is the hero, THIS is the villain, THIS individual was wronged in some elemental way. But when I find myself in a hole, G. Thomas, I generally just keep digging, knowing by experience that the world isn't that deep. In this spirit was most of America built, afterall.

Now you and I are very much alike already, G. Thomas, but then I ask you, is it always a good idea to help the Chief?

the hows and whys of reverse cliff-diving

2005-06-07T18:00:00.000-04:00

Chess is the opposite of clamor

He is an older, though no less optimistic Son of Thomas Magnum making his return today, complete with an additional half-inch of forehead, fifteen extra pounds and, most alarmingly, white hair in the temple region, all mine to return, through months of unnecessary work, back up the steep slope of potential energy.

That is the thing about cliffs, an old diver on Lanai once told me: no matter how terrifying, they tend to charm by exhilaration. The slow and deliberate slog back is where the real daredevilry comes in, flapping its cape at the neighbors and looking damned inappropriate. A dermatologist friend of the family informs me the rapid hair loss is likely stress induced, and will return. Though the resilient refugees are bound to emigrate soon after, I will not wince, being an old-fashioned sort of guy. Jason Statham, meet Jason Statham.

The weight, certainly, is mine to deal with, and six-day-a-week workouts will make short enough work of it. The bastard. If the worst of my own end is to come out looking like a melon-headed underwear model, I can hardly complain. Humility, etc.

Much thanks to Antonio for assisting me in learning a new game. All the loud noises this ugly, classless, disgusting city can throw are absorbed by three glasses of iced yerba mate and four hours of chess, I promise you.

Vancouver, in case you've forgotten...

2005-03-28T04:05:00.000-05:00

Page one of a planned 2000-page guide to the life of Mo Whatshername, in the event that she needs it...

You were born on the sixteenth of June, 1983, by caesarian section in the maternity ward of the Waterbury Hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut. I believe it was sunny. Your arrival was more of a shock for our middle brother, Stephen, who had yet to experience such a tweak to his ego, and spent the day stealing my toys. I don’t recall my response, but this isn’t surprising. At the time I was a touch autistic, or at least emotionally vague, and it is entirely possible I didn’t respond at all. I’m sure I was happy, of course, and will include photographs supporting this.

Stephen and I were turned over to Selim N. and his wife Linda—who remains our mother’s closest and oldest friend. We spent the day with them, playing in the family room of their home in the East End of Waterbury, waiting for news. They bought us Happy Meals. This is important, as control over our diets will be a central point of the study of our shared childhood, which will follow.

Although our family lived in a small raised ranch in suburban Middlebury, Waterbury was—if the term can be used—our ancestral home. Both our mother, Margaret Ellen G., and our grandmother, Theresa Ann S., were born and raised among its several nondescript hills, and any number of friends and relatives lived there as well, attending the same schools and churches and generally existing in a manner unchanged from the coming of their immigrant ancestors, most of whom tumbled off ships in New York around 1900, grumbling in foreign languages and smelling badly. People went to church. During the summer, they went to picnics or parish carnivals. Some still spoke Portuguese, Italian, or Polish, and in their neighborhoods, which I will draw out later, or in their small stores downtown you could still see that national character carried, useless as a stuffed cat, across the oceans to America. Some still smelled badly, of course, but the overall tone was Fifties conformity, and it was pleasant enough, and no one seemed to complain.

The Charming Inevitability of Bear Attacks

2005-03-21T11:36:00.000-05:00

Can Congress hold a hearing about how ludicrously, hilariously, hypnotically friggin' unfortunate my life is these days? Yes, 'unfortunate'...deflation is the stuff of reality, you fucking child. When I'm not helping my mother wipe relatives' asses, I am conducting audits, and missing events such as, well, you read it...

http://www.sister.co.jp/GirlsUStour2005/

Happiness is a lazy arrangement of the facts, folks. While my hairline tries to distance itself from the world around it, and conscience gets the better of my vices, and my hand hovers inches over my cell phone through all dark hours of the night, I find myself less and less resistant to the reality that--ten years from now--this will seem like a Paradise. So, I give in.

Perhaps I am unable to attend a night of Japanese girl-punk, and yes, Gang of Four will probably sell-out before I get to the Avalon box office, and yes, if I don't get to the gym within five minutes I will officially become the least sexy version of myself in living memory, but...Hitler is still dead.

Move over for a damage case

2005-03-20T22:11:00.000-05:00

I've found something/That there's no use for.

Reveal thyself to me, O moral of the story, that I might emotionally invest in you. You fucker.

The video made an interesting diversion, and sitting in the 8th floor conference room—the long and oddly shaped one across from the physical therapy center—I had pause to reflect on the appalling mess I’ve become, at least on video.

Nevermind the change in my sister, who is twenty pounds lighter. Myself? That a slab of ham could have bags under its eyes, this comes as enough of a surprise, but to recognize at least in silhouette the body supporting it, my goodness…

It was good of Richard Harris to donate his hairstyle. And praise Jesus for Memory, which provides us the wherewithal to seed distant images of teenage curls with a stubborn tuft of fluffy worthlessness, like tufts of moss on a hillside, holding the mountain together. But eat me, Time. You fucker of a cliché.

It was fun to watch my brother’s wedding video, as only a month and a half ago I was ten pounds lighter.

Have you spent a month eating in the cafeteria of a half-assed medical facility, catching two hours of sleep now-and-then on the windowsill of the waiting room? In between visits from doctors, and the shuffling of other families, who had nothing more to deal with than those same doctors removing some significant area from the skull of a loved one? Were they expecting good news? Quit your snivelling, ugliness must sleep.

Just think, ten years from now you could be completely bald, fifty pounds heavier, with all of your loved ones dead or estranged.

For now, more Motorhead, and some Pierre Fernand Reserve. An audit next week in Connecticut, then the slow path to summer. But we are in the Rehab Hospital now—clostridium difficile and all, smelling like old shit with half our head shaved—glad you understand our progress! My good friends! I am miserable with happiness.

10:20PM
3.20.2005

Useless Trivia

2005-03-17T23:51:00.000-05:00

Mmmm. cognac...

In case anyone was wondering, this is the official 'ComaWatch 2005' mix, pieced together in the 6th floor waiting room of the Neural ICU at RIH. Bear in mind, I had only the cds in my car at the time of the accident. This is the soundtrack of my sister breathing through a tube, and if it is lame, so are comas...

Thinking of a Dream I Had
The Walkmen
A good song on a disappointing album. Why did they go from sounding like The Walkmen, to sounding like Bob Dylan circa 1966? This is a development path?

Banquet (Phones Disco Edit)
Bloc Party
I enjoy British accents. And drum machines. Plus, I can beat you up. Trust me. Say something.

The Back of Love
Echo and the Bunnymen
See previous entry.

Taste
Ride
I should hate these guys. See previous entry.

Staring at the Sun
TV on the Radio
I pray they keep going.

Part Company
The Go-Betweens
Semaine de Bonte is my hero.

Regret
New Order
I forgive them.

Glad Girls
Guided by Voices
I thought this was a Fooled by April song for about two years.

Dreams Burn Down
Ride
Christ, I should hate these guys.

Little House of Savages
The Walkmen
Bring back the antique piano, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

The Answer
Bloc Party
If you rip-off Gang of Four via Fugazi, it isn't as bad as being Radio 4.

You Can't Hurry Love
The Concretes
Karl, you were right. I owe you a beer. Come to Montreal.

Ai No Shirushi
Puffy AmiYumi
If you are a Japanese female between the ages of 18 and 30...call me.

You've Never Lived
The Go-Betweens
I will buy one of their cds for you. That is how good they are.

The Killing Moon
Echo and the Bunnymen
It was in Donnie Darko.

Neighborhood #2
The Arcade Fire
I refuse to hate bands that sound like the Pixies.

Carry Me Ohio
Sun Kil Moon
This is the most beautiful male voice I have ever heard. I assume he wrote it about someone he loved, who killed herself, or simply died, or was simply forgotten. When I hear this song, I see people crying in the fucking waiting room, and thinking.

Green green green

but what about the sweetness we knew

what about what's good, what's true

from those days?

...

Craving dreams

a million miles ago you seem

the star that i just don't see

anymore

Words long gone

lost on journeys we walked on

lost her voice is heard along

the way

Sorry for

never going by your door

never feeling love like that

anymore

Heal her soul

and carry her my angel

ohio

Carry me, Cognac, the road is dull...

2005-03-11T17:36:00.000-05:00

Friday and I feel wordless, so just an update. My sister is speaking, having been tricked by a tricky speech therapist into forcing a bit of cough over her vocal cords. It appears to have worked, and she is learning slowly the things she knows already. Such is life.

We are out of the damned ICU, and on to the rehab hospital portion of the tour. Some sad stories, and I feel like a dumb, hand-me-down Dante. My kingdom for a trip to Galway, or even the Outer Banks.

I superstitiously offered up Bourbon to the brain-god, as the true One was disinterested. I am left to find a new love. Cognac is leading the race, although sake has a certain Eastern vagueness…

In other news Gucci loafers, Burberry, and Creed Irish Tweed. Delight in the delightful, they say, and they say expect the rest.

If anyone reading this ever needs anything, seriously, don’t hesitate to ask.

You Say Despair, I Say To-mah-toe

2005-03-08T14:34:00.000-05:00

A gift for you!

Some potential t-shirt slogans, from the simple, to the simply elegant, and perfect for all ages...

"I Went to Church Every Sunday for Forty-Six Years and All I Got Was This Lousy Cancer."

"God Didn't Cut the Oxygen to My Wife's Brain, My New Baby Did."

"God Loves Me. He Just Loves AIDS More."

"If You Pray Hard Enough, Your Four-Year-Old Will Still Be Blind."

"Embollisms...God's Way of Saying You Talk Too Fast."

"God Loves Me. He Just Hates My Braindead Baby."

"Nietzsche is Dead, and So Is My Fiancee."

If you need me, I'll be selling these outside of the Chapel...

We can dance in the ashes

2005-03-06T11:29:00.000-05:00

What? Didn't everyone dress like this in 1985?

There is a man in a hospital gown and tan slippers circling the halls. He walks past every ten minutes. His arms hang at his sides. Afterthoughts? I suppose he is too busy walking, and too busy for the luxury of them.

Feet, too, are miracles.

Our miracles are tedious. We don’t notice them.

When he passes I nod or wave, but feel inadequate—as though there were a better way to meet a stranger. Ask about his head? How’s the family?

Being inadequate doesn’t seem exotic here, given the surroundings. Not too much the conspicuous violet.

I meant to say last week that I’ve never liked myself more than I do at bedside, around 4:00am, wiping drool from my sister’s mouth. Must be the Catholic upbringing. You who will never suffer enough for having suffered loudly.

The woman in the next bed complains about the lighting. Remind me to tell you what panic and grief did to my compassion.

The woman vomits every fifteen minutes. Her husband has a thick, unpleasant voice. It cuts through my headphones.

There are more people than chairs in the waiting room. A Latino family sits by the television, watching a Spanish-language cable network.

The family of the woman who slipped into a coma after giving birth to a beautiful baby boy is slumped in the corner of the room. A slump, not a huddle.

Earlier in the day, the new father had the nurses show my sister his son. My mother tells me Maureen smiled.

I hate this place deeply. Raze it. Bring salt.

Two weeks ago a young woman appeared in the recliner in the family consultation room. This was the room my mother had claimed, where she slept at night. The woman told us her husband had just returned from an eighteen-month tour in Iraq, and was hit by a drunken driver on his way home from the gas station. He always wore the shoulder restraint of his seatbelt off to one side, she told us, because it made him uncomfortable otherwise.

My mother didn’t like this woman. She said there was something wrong with this woman. My mother can be judgmental, and distrustful. I resented it this time, as I often do, but when $200 disappeared from my sister-in-law’s purse, my mother asked security about the woman.

Turns out she had no husband, and we haven’t seen her since.

I have a hard time being angry at her. There may be hope for me yet. What does it take, do you think, to make a person behave that way?

5:16AM
3.6.2005

And under running laughter!

2005-03-04T01:31:00.000-05:00

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
(poem read in grammar school)

I file one nail, stop to see how I’ve done, and then move to the next. Maureen has opened her eyes, but isn’t seeing anything, or not that I can tell. She stares up and to the right, at the numbers on the monitor, or the lines running to the IV pump.

Through this, my mother repeats something about God. I don’t mean to be condescending when I talk to her, but something lashes out when she goes on. I wait for it, and then I watch it. It confuses me, because I’m not proud, or hadn't been.

The woman across the hall gave birth to a five-pound, nine-ounce baby boy. An embollism left her comatose. The nurses wheel her child down the hall to the father, who leans against a door jamb. He stands very quietly, listening to an older woman. She is trying to comfort him. They speak in Portuguese.

I catch Jesus. He says it.

O, thank you Lord, for these little moments.

Falling down nightly...

2005-02-24T00:06:00.000-05:00

Funny when it didn't matter?

Possibility of permanent damage to various functional centers of the brain, including the cluster controlling the movement of the eyes, and of the right arm. If so, stroke-like damage most likely caused by oxygen starvation, and/or a simple pressure caused by contusions on the left side of the brain...

Three weeks I've been in that place, and six patients have died, from healthy to dead in a day. I've watched the doctors tell their families. I refuse to say more of it.

All the news is bad, every call is a panic, everything buzzes and rings and flashes. My mother can't sleep, my father can't stay awake, and my sister can do neither.

And you mean to tell me--with all the fight an old woman has when her wiring is torn, pissing in her bed, or how hard a child holds a tree in a fucking tidal wave--that it isn't worth it? Spare me the artful horseshit, I insist on not understanding.

But what I wouldn't do for an article on modern health care...

"That power of conviction is a hard thing for any writer to sustain, and especially so once he becomes conscious of it. Fitzgerald fell apart when the world no longer danced to his music; Faulkner's conviction faltered when he had to confront Twentieth Century Negroes instead of the black symbols in his books; and when Dos Passos tried to change his convictions he lost all his power."

"What Lured Hemingway to Ketchum?"
Hunter S. Thompson

Good Times at the Neural ICU, 5AM Style!

2005-02-16T15:55:00.000-05:00

Can I please, please, please get some sleep?

RIH, 6 INCU, 4:42AM, 2.15.2005

I didn't have time to finish this one. I will finish it later, sorry.

Letter to the Patient

2005-02-14T17:45:00.000-05:00

And you smell, too...

Dear Maureen,

Wake up. Seriously, enough with the coma thing. We've all been crying for two weeks now. Mom looks like Willem Defoe. I now have Brando's hairline from The Missouri Breaks. Even Dad lost two pounds, which we both know is the equivalent of two cubic miles of ice suddenly shearing from the polar ice cap.

Also, my blog is no longer the fun diversion from winter I'd intended. It's beginning to get a bit clove cigarette in here. Hurry the fuck up. I want to post about coconut bras and why Bloc Party should try to sound more like the English Beat...

Plus, if you intend to get hiccups again while on the respirator, please wait until Stephen is on watch. You know I have a bad heart, and 3AM is no time for nonsense. Stephen has a wife; I have champagne, Pearl Vodka, and Tiger Balm. He is better suited.

In closing, wake up.

Yours in Jesus,
Gavin

PS. Love the haircut! Asymmetry is in!

Part Thirty-Two, In Which I Finally Fail To Make Sense...

2005-02-14T16:38:00.000-05:00

I swear, O god of Blogging, that when this has passed I will never blog after 2AM, at bedside, in the ICU, ever, ever again. You will allow me one last purple passage? It doesn't have to make sense? Awesome. Hugs and kisses...

Correction: "Der Monch Am Meer"...forgive, me be tired.

I am a bad person, or perhaps, should marry.

2005-02-13T03:48:00.001-05:00

Me and My Animal Habits

2005-02-11T17:30:00.000-05:00

There will be no graduation! There will be no trumpets blowing!

Goofy pretense, my one true friend!

Around ten a neurologist walked in, said hello. His head was large and sunken at the temples, but the skin of his face was youthful and smooth. A grey corona of hair moved in a current, back and forth, but slowly, like the branches of a willow. Smile. The air in the room was moving, a fan was on. It was meant to lower her body temperature, encourage restfulness and limit her brain activity. Brain activity sapped energy from more important matters, and made problems where none were needed.

This was what the neurologist told me. He was very kind, very soft-spoken, and competent in a way that put me at ease. This quiet confidence is wonderful, although it can seem like arrogance, depending on your question. This is another cliché, this idea of cool, dispassionate skills. Most of the doctors have it. I would think they live in it, like a coat or something. Something to look nice in when a woman is asking about her husband, if his shitting his bed is a good sign.

What are you supposed to do, incidentally, in that case?

The neurosurgeons share an unnervingly young look, like they preserved themselves in studies that last ten years, locked over Thayer Street…

The morning resident is in his seventh year. My aunt calls him—in her beautiful, slow Southern accent—‘My son.’ He is thirty-four years old, and has never made more than thirty-five thousand dollars. He attended medical school at Trinity College, in Dublin.

I remember the medical school. We had a common entrance, and shared ashtrays in the building courtyard, which was really an alleyway for an administration building, if I remember correctly.

It surprised me that they smoked.

Earlier in the week, a stroke victim with emphysema occupied the other bed. I’ve never heard anything like it. I smoked heavily for a while, myself, in Ireland, up to two
packs a day. I’ll never smoke again, two nights hearing him breathe like a ship sinking.

He was moved to a step-down unit on Monday.

The next was a man who, while shaving in an upstairs bathroom, had blown a secret little aneurysm, hiding in his head. His wife found him. Their daughter spends most of the morning crying, pulled up on a windowsill in the consultation room.

The next was a man fresh from surgery, holding over in the Neural ICU, for observation. And here again we have this awful, strange disjunction. All night long—as I watched seven languages I can’t read crawl up through the numbers on the monitor—he was shitting his bed. But why should a man, of any age, appear more dignified at the lip of death than, say, while taking a shit? What difference does it make? To whom?

And this is my issue, tonight: A brain can either be right, or wrong. At this time, we are neither. Why not wait to respond to something that is, rather than chasing your own morbidity through the cracks in the tiles? Making it, in the first place, something, and then following it—crying over its hands—in every instance deeper into an annihilating sentimentality that, in the end, will only comfort itself?

G.F., our primary neurosurgeon, is a perfect example of the alternative. Listening to his calm, hobbyist voice, you could never tell he was describing tears in my sister’s memory.

They’re bringing her downstairs for an MRI. Gotta go.

2/10/05
1:06AM

It's a Maudlin, Maudlin World!

2005-02-09T13:00:00.000-05:00