-> MY GLASS HOUSE
THE FINALE DAY ONE G21 AFRICA G21 EUROPE IRISH EYES LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA NEW YORK STATE (Of Mind) MY GLASS HOUSE THE RIGHT STUFF VOX POPULI RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT ARCHIVES. LAST WEEK's EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES |
NEW ORLEANS - 29 March, 2004: Only an hour or two could have made the difference. According to people who saw the large pool of blood, according to the doctors in the Trauma Unit at Charity Hospital, if I had remained unconscious for at least another hour it would all have been over. The Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) who rush me to the hospital gave me the designation "Unknown Mackerel". (Matt would later joke that they had probably picked that name because they figured I was a dead fish.) I suppose I could have been.
I have spent the past few days, when I allow myself to think about what happened, wondering why I did regain consciousness. I have been thinking, which I accept you won't find comforting, that it would have been better if I had not. Another hour and all my problems, my exhaustion with life, would have ended. I was unconscious, after all, and thus not in any pain. Body and soul would simply have separated, at long last, and this long ordeal would have ceased.
But I did regain consciousness. I found myself in a pool of my own blood at the foot of the rickety stairs leading up to my flat. I had busted open the back of my head on the concrete there and lay bleeding for hours -- maybe five or six is my estimate. My blood loss was such that I was too weak to get to my feet. I called out for help for a long time, but no one heard me. I decided to crawl over to the fence separating the property my building is on from the house I worked on next door. I would use the fence to pull myself to my feet. My plan was to pull myself along the fence toward the street where I hoped someone would call an ambulance.
I fell. Too weak to keep my knees from buckling, even with the support of the fence, I crawled along the alleyway between the two houses. I continued to call for help as I crawled along the alleyway.
A neighbor finally heard me, looked out her window, then came to her balcony and saw all the blood. She freaked and had her roommate call 911. I lost consciousness again shortly after the EMTs arrived. Unknown Mackerel.
When I awakened again in the Trauma Unit, the heads of doctors in masks filling my field of vision like out of some movie, I overhead that my blood pressure was now "up to" 60 over 40. From my own experience, working in a mental hospital Admissions ward during my youth, I knew that was dangerously low. I was freezing, too. I knew they had some type of heating blanket tossed over multiple sheets on me, but I was colder than I'd ever felt. Death was so near, I thought. But the doctors were fighting to keep death away. They were asking me who I was and who they could call about me.
Did I know what day it was? Of course. Thursday the 25th. Yesterday was my fifty-second birthday. Did I know where I was? Charity Hospital in New Orleans, I supposed. Good. Good. Just stay with us. You're going to make it.
I was freezing. I was in and out of both consciousness and attentiveness. They would do what they had to do I knew. Catheters, transfusions, CAT scans, X-rays. I was freezing. It was all happening somewhere outside of my concern. I was on some conveyor belt of events over which I had no control. They would do what they had to do and I was theirs until it was over.
As happens every time I visit the hospital, a new area of concern was found. When all the other doctors had finished their work, we all had to wait on the verdict of the urologist. It seems that, this time, there was a problem with one of my kidneys. A couple of scars. I had to agree to come back in a couple months so that they could test again and make sure there was not cancer there.
I knew that I was out of the woods when they finally took the cuff off my neck. The X-rays looked good, I was told; my neck was not broken. A doctor asked that I move my head and neck around for him. I had not been allowed to move my neck for hours. Another doctor said that there appeared to be no bleeding in the brain.
Matt and Jo decided that I should stay at their place for the first day out of the hospital, concerned that complications might emerge. Jo said something about people with head injuries needing to be observed for a day or so. The "Wound Care" fact sheet the hospital gave me upon release said much the same thing.
"If anything happened to you," Jo told me, "who would know? How would you get help?"
Matt told me, the morning after my release from hospital, that the person who they had as Patient Liaison for Charity Hospital had been quite impressive. She was very calming, he said. While not revealing any information which might lead to alarming conclusions, she had left him feeling informed. He said he had worried when the most she would commit to was that my condition was "guarded." But, he continued, she made sure that he did not worry that all was lost.
I told him that morning that I was not at all convinced that having survived was a positive development. I would have to think about it for another couple of days.
MY PAL TERRY ("Van Helsing") sent me a few dollars by way of Western Union for my birthday. My friend Darhl sent a few more snail mail. So I was able to buy cigarettes and food, not to mention more toilet paper. It was (cumulatively) just enough money to ensure a few days of respite when I returned to my apartment.
I spoke with Barbara briefly over the weekend. When she had called to wish me Happy Birthday, it was to discover from Matt that I was in hospital again. She told Matt that I should come back to California.
I have retreated into a good book. I do that when I want to leave myself for a while, when I want to think about what's going on in my life. In this instance, it's a copy of Washington, D.C. by Gore Vidal. I borrowed the book from Matt when he brought me back to my apartment.
Spot visits from concerned friends have interrupted my reading. Jac, who had preceded me at the Cat, brought over egg rolls and pork rinds. He says there is some reason God won't let me die. The neighbor lady who discovered me in the alleyway dropped by to see how I was faring before going to her church. My friend Greg Cowman, with whom I used to work at the Cat, brought over a slice of cake. Matt popped back by to return the modem he had borrowed.
The morning coffee tastes okay today, if not luxurious. Our local National Public Radio station, broadcasting from the University of New Orleans, is having pledge week. I have finally gotten up the energy to make an entry here about what happened at my birthday. I shall finish reading Vidal today and come to grips with the questions that trouble me. We began covering them last time, my Love. You know already that I am exhausted with this life ...
On the concluding page of his novel, Washington, D.C., Gore Vidal describes one of his characters, whom most readers would probably find unsympathetic, in this manner:"... she never even briefly ceased to think it worth the effort to continue to say and do what ought to be said and done."I can only hope that my own epitaph, with this effort as its hallmark, would contain such a sentiment.This long diary has been called "My Glass House" because I must hope that I have been as clinical in my investigation of the motives and flaws in my own character and actions as I have in those of others. I have tried not to flinch from speaking candidly about my fears and failures, resentments and windmills. At the same time, I have taken this mercilessness with myself, as any social critic I must believe should do, as allowing me the license to unveil the hypocrisy and cruelty of others -- most especially those who presume it their right to govern the rest of us.
Political decisions have been at the core of my own life, it seems, because I cannot but believe that politics is personal. Meanwhile, having worked with and for politicians, I know that the most successful, the most winning, of their lot don't take anything personally at all. Winning is all that matters to them. They live in an amoral vacuum while pandering to the moral sentimentality that they believe we all harbor. Our moral certitudes are little more than grist for their self-absorbed wills to power.
Thus, while being flamboyant in my support for Senator John Kerry during this election season, I have no illusions about his saintliness. It has simply been my experience that, unlike their Republican doppelgangers, Democratic fat cats know that it is in their interests to throw us poor working class schlubs a bone. Democrats, unlike Republicans, don't need to know that we are going hungry, as one clever writer put it, in order to enjoy their own meal.
Would I personally support most the policies of either American political party? Most certainly not. I am far too compassionate and leftist to believe in this system. I believe that better systems exist. I believe those systems are socialist, not be confused with any form of communist, in their nature and many of the features have been demonstrated by social democracies in Europe and Asia. I have no doubt that the American version of democracy is toxic, for people everywhere, and the forced imposition of its principles is frightening.
But then, sometimes favorably and as often in the pejorative, I've been accused of "thinking like a European."
I bring these latter thoughts here as I thrash to reach some conclusion about the soul-searching I have been doing these last few months. One would expect that coming so close to death, again, I would be in soul-search mode, but I have found that no new conclusions have evidenced themselves since my recent brush. Rather, everything I was thinking before this recent anniversary seems all the more true.
The only effort which provides the least fulfillment or satisfaction in my life is that which I am performing at this moment and I cannot afford to support that effort. Everything else in my life other than writing is colorless, tasteless and dead. The writing, on the other hand, cannot be maintained unless I have some life outside of this act, and I have lost the will to do that, battered as I am by unremitting poverty.
That makes it all the more troubling and ironic for me that I regained consciousness four days ago. I sincerely wish that I had not. I foresee nothing ahead of me but more pain, more frustration, more numbness, more despair. I wish to make an end.
30 March, 2004: Over the last few weeks, I've already detailed the why to you. All that is left for me is to determine, specifically, the how. Meanwhile, I mean to use the time remaining to leave you with some semblance of a masterpiece.
We both know that G21 shall disappear with me. No one has come forward to take over the thankless task. I cannot honestly say I blame them. There is nothing glorious or easy about doing what I've done here.
"The writer thanked the producers for the lovely paycheck. Then he shot them." writelikegod.com
When is the last time you talked politics with your dog? dogshatebush.com
31 March, 2004: WHEN MY FRIEND STEVEN BLAND died, his final complaint to me was that it was isolation from other human beings that was killing him. By then, his AIDS was so advanced that you had to don a "space suit" just to enter the room they kept him in, for fear that any random germ would worsen his condition. So, he told me over the telephone, no one visited him any longer. I could not myself, because I was in California, while he was at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York. That was why he had decided that it was time to check out. I told him, angrily, that leaving that isolation ward was tantamount to suicide. He said that he didn't care anymore, he could not go on living in isolation.I understand now how the isolation is the hardest part. If I had not regained consciousness the other day, it would have been hours before anyone would have found me. That most likely would have been at night, when the people in the flat next door leave for work. If it was their day off, I likely would not have been discovered for days.
After the flurry of visits on Sunday, I haven't seen a soul in days. I went out to try to reach my pal Shawn, hoping to use his telephone to call Barbara, finally make contact with Darryl about the job I'm doing for him, download my e-mail. Shawn was not in. I shall try him again today or see if my friend Greg is free to have me come to his house for a few hours.
Looking back on my life now, I have to admit that it went on a bit too long. With the exceptions of this magazine and my friendship with Dragan and Dragana, little of it had any meaning for me. I should have accepted that it was over when I could no longer bring myself to complete a piece of fiction. Without that outlet, everything else was hollow. I had lost the spark.
As Terry once commented, whenever I stopped writing stories, I invariably lived them and no one, not even an author, can long endure living as a fictional character. There is no hand there to write in the strokes of good luck.
I have felt this for years and for years there is always the well-meaning someone to say, "Things will work out," "You're a survivor," "You're strong" while ignoring all evidence to the contrary -- even my own passionate protestations. I suppose it makes every someone feel better to say that they provided words of encouragement, even when those words fly in the face of the discouraging facts.
One should not, therefore, find it surprising that the predominant generation now, those born after the second World War, have found a new religion of encouragement. Here's my analysis.
The Baby Boom generation, at least in the West, was one of the most privileged -- and thereby educated, coddled and spoiled -- in the history of mankind. Add to this the fact that they, we, were raised by television nannies who taught us that every problem, no matter how complex, could be resolved in no more than two hours, often by some form of Deus ex machina. As we entered young adulthood, Grace Slick sang to us hauntingly that "...one pill makes you larger/One pill makes you small..." This notion fit quite nicely with the cultural influences of the time. No one had yet seen their friends lose jobs or homes to cocaine, die from speed, the Art Linkletter hysteria that LSD had killed his daughter was laughed off, booze was a vital ingredient of the Sinatra-esque "Swinging Lifestyle" and no one's Mom had yet been sent to rehab to kick her Valium addiction.
George Carlin joked, in a routine of his during the 1970s, that all human behavior had been reduced by scientists to a matter of chemical interactions. Good chemicals made things go well, bad chemicals made things crazy.
It should not be surprising then, that every third television commercial broadcast on American television these days is for a chemical solution or that the pharmaceutical companies are becoming the wealthiest on the planet. America is now hooked on its drugs, legal and illegal. The U.S. Congress falls over itself to make special dispensations for Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company, in a so-called Homeland Security Act. Mr. Bush celebrates the largesse offered to multinational pharmaceutical companies, while withholding $100 Billion of its price tag, in his Medicare "reform" Bill.
Just as the adults of the previous generation genuflected before the religions of 12-Step Programs and psychiatric therapists (who kept them coming back week after week for life, much like a new church -- but a church focused on you), the present generation embraces the religion of "improving and enhancing" chemistry. But, unlike the euphoric adults of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, one Soma is not enough to satisfy our needs; we have a multitude of desires and we are aggressive about having choices, so we need a multiplicity of somas.
Don't like those crow's feet or wrinkles on your brow? Get an injection of Botox. Feeling a little sad or listless? Ask your doctor if ???? is right for you. ("Oops! Sorry it seems to making a lot of your kids suicidal." And the FDA says, "Shhh!") Want to pretend you're not allergic to ragweed? Here, take this Allegra. Want to set records in sports? Have you heard about the enhancing effects of anabolic steroids? Poor man, suffering from "erectile dysfunction"? Ask your doctor for a free sample of Cialis. Better living through chemistry. But it's gonnah cost ya'!
This state- and medically-sanctioned shamanism will pass like all of the other forms of shamanism that preceded it, from Catholicism through Freudianism, but nof before making a handful of people criminally rich. That's the way these nostrums always go. And we, bleating all the way, embrace them like the lost children that we are. ... Well, not all of us.
I have argued before and continue to maintain that it is ethical and realistic to tell someone in despair that they do, indeed, have every right to despair. I am fully convinced that it's okay to see the darkness and brutishness of the world and that it is only single-selfishness that allows so many people to turn sophistry or chemistry toward this darkness and brutishness rather than address it for what it is.
I maintain that it is not "Okay" to aggressively press for the positive spin on life. It is an abdication of your responsibility to the rest of humanity. It is a seemingly benign form of cruelty. Would you really believe that a life filled with shopping, Prozac and PlayStation 2 was fulfilling and good if you didn't need those palliatives to crowd out your guilt? I don't think so.
Even as we celebrate our best of possible worlds, the highest point of achievement in the history of humanity if you listen to our political leaders, we need so many more chemical solutions, diversions and other shamanisms to make that world "livable". What's wrong with this picture?
The alternative, of course, is to be called a Jeremiah or deluded, as I have been, by the cheerleaders for the status quo.
During my walk this morning, it crossed my mind that this essay is not your stereotypical rationalization for giving up. They are characterized, at least dramatically, as being either apologetic or remorseful. When I do surrender finally, there will be apologies needed. Most particularly there must be one for Barbara, who I know believes I can weather this latest struggle with hopelessness. I can only hope she will forgive me if I lose and understand why it was no longer a battle I had the will to fight. I shall also have to apologize to Dragan and Dragana because I already know that they would think there must be someone I can turn to, but there isn't. And I'd apologize to Matt, who would be left with contacting my sister-in-law and disposing of what little effects I have left. Dmitri can have this laptop if he wants it and; Darryl who must dispose of the effects he has stored for me since my trip to Europe and whose Web site I would not have completed. It goes without saving that this list must include all those people to whom I still owed money.
I would not believe things had reached such an extreme if I had any prospects whatsoever. I have been hungry more times in the last two years than I have been full. I have, like this afternoon, eaten the last bowl of rice only to say to myself, "Well, that's the last of the food for a while." Ironically, if I had in my possession only half the money that Charity Hospital says I owe them for saving my life, I'd consider it worth the effort to go on struggling, hoping against hope that something would finally get better. I've held onto that vain hope ever since returning from Europe, haven't I? Has anything gotten better? Not really. I have no one to turn to and I'm sick and tired of getting deeper into the hole while living with daily misery and fear.
As evidenced above, I am not so much apologetic as angry. There is remorse, of course, because no one can be sanguine about the fact of failing at life. But I also feel that I was exploited as often as not, that kindness was taken for weakness and that selfish people took advantage of my generosity while acting as if they cared about my welfare. Thanks to all of you who had no compunction about eating my last meal, drinking my last beer or taking my last dollar. After all, it was your world; I was merely part of the scenery.
I suppose I shall also thank all the preachers in my life, those people who couldn't understand why I would not believe it was a fabulous idea to live as an exact replica of their lives and parrot their beliefs about the nature of existence. One of my largest failings, I suppose, was that I could not embrace a dogma. If I had, it would provide me with some (probably false) hope now. I would have had the same certitude as those preachers who knew what was best for me.
I'll indulge myself and answer the one who has been preaching to me the longest: The empty tomb is a glimpse of our common destination. It's merely waiting for someone to fill its maw.
1 April, 2004: I now have a sense of urgency. I have decided that its best to have this all over and done with before my next door neighbor, to whom I pay rent, feels the need to harass me for the money. That means getting this edition of the magazine completed and out to you.I was thinking yesterday about that little game we all play, list the things you would do if you knew these were the last days of your life. One usually has to be in a dire situation in order to have that kind of knowledge, I realized. We never think about that when we so cavalierly play that game. The unspoken assumption is that some physician has said, "You have X number of days to live." Nobody ever playing the game thinks about the worst case, the only people who really fit the model.
So the game is the very opposite of its presented intent. If you are facing your end, it is because you have so few options to begin with, you won't go out to eat your favorite food, or attempt to romance your dream girl. Chances are all that you can do has already been limited to mundaneities. I ran out of food yesterday. I ran out of money days before that. If I knew these were my last days, how would I be able to do anything on a Wish List? I trust you'll remember this when -- a job interviewer, believing herself clever, for example -- asks you that silly question, "What would you do if you knew you only had one week more to live?"
4 April, 2004: Matt came over on Saturday, the day before his birthday. We talked frankly about the circumstances of my life and the hurtles that face me, the concerns that I've occupied myself with this week."You don't sound anything like an Aries these days, man," he observed. "I recognize that things look hopeless, but maybe a miracle will happen." Then he said, "Yeah, I don't believe that either ..."
A bit shocked that I'd run out of food days ago and didn't seem to be distressed about that fact, he went out and got bags of beans and rice. "I'm sure you'd enjoy eating something." He also left me a few cigarettes and rolling papers with which to "recycle" the butts.
I said it didn't really seem to matter one way or the other. I am simply marking time, in a way. I have done "The Ben Franklin Close." In one column is this magazine, the only joy there is in my life. In the other column is my so-called life, an empty vessel.
"We'll think of something," he said, trying to sound encouraging.
I replied that I am not certain I want anything any longer.
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "
Rod
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.
In 2002, he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Our Resident Philosopher is attempting to secure enough part-time work to perhaps equal the income of a single good full-time position. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider. 
Rod barely survives in New Orleans, Louisiana. This town is eroding his normal sense of driven purpose. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.
Rod is "noodling" with idea of a Glass House book. (Are you listening, Timothy?) He also has a screenplay and a(nother) proposed novel in queue.
He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.
| HOME | THE PREVIOUS GLASS HOUSE | THE NEXT GLASS HOUSE |
CREDITS || AWARDS || SEARCH ENGINES || LINKS ||
VOX POPULI is YOUR PAGE to talk back to us. I'm glad you're not bashful. Keep those cards and e-mails comin', Kids!
Our Editor does listen!
© 2004, GENERATOR 21.
E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your kudos, brickbats and suggestions to rod@g21.net.
