I'M DYING AS A MATTER OF FACT

Today is 122221.  Now, what grammatical term describes that numerical oddity? 

Anyway, it's been a long long time since my last blog entry. I think I know why. I'm dying of prostate cancer. My cancer is not the slow kind that causes doctors to say, "You'll probably die of something else." It's more aggressive and normal doses of hormones don't seem to stop it, so I'm recently taking massive doses of hormones. Those and other drugs I'm taking create fatigue. My peppiness is petering out.

Of course, I could die of something else with all the hormones I'm taking, but my heart and lungs are fine. I'd probably live into my 90s (I'm 84) except for the prostate cancer. My body's first reaction (huge drop in PSA) to the massive hormone doses caused the doctor to say, "Maybe 3 more years?" Good news, I suppose. 

Anyway, with that morbid info out of sight in my synaptic self, influencing all my thoughts, moods and decisions, I imagine my motivation to write may be waning. However, for a couple of weeks recently, I went on a submission kick and sent off a couple-a-dozen short stories that I wrote in the years before and after I turned 80. Results pending.  

As to poetry, another poem was published online today in Brief Wilderness. Interesting tale follows. The poetry editor thought the poem might be hard to understand, and I wrote a para to explain how easy it is to understand. They published my unpolished explanation along with the poem. Had I known that? Ah! Ahem, well?

This past year has been the most successful in all my years of submitting. To those few who still hang around to read these, thanks for your patience. Right now, in Starbucks, I'm pretty fatigued. Time to go home, sit in my recliner and doze off, watching TV.

A CHECK FOR 20 DOLLARS

Not much time between this entry and the last, is there? But, hell, I got more promising news. Another submission has found success. Poetry again, a set of 3 poems accepted by Sequestrum, more poems published this year than stories. Yet, I'm still anticipating submissions to Fiddlehead and Prairie Schooner, each of which invited me to send another tale.  Writer's block still troubles me. I started a fresh story a few days back, but it died a quick death. Perhaps the check for $20 from Sequestrum for the poems will dynamite the blockage (that's right, a check).

 

Why, I wonder, does such a successful year as this come by as the news about my prostate cancer grows darker? We're into a new drug now, and if it doesn't work, then, I worry, my hoped for 4 to 5 more years of living won't happen. I'm trying to keep my thoughts in each day rather than in a future day. I'm surprised I worry so little. Still, I have days that are inexplicably darker, and I think it's a sign that my synaptic self is more aware of what I face than it allows my consciousness to consider.

By the way, fellow writers, I'm submitting more work, more often than at any time in my recorded history.

GAMBLING, GAMBLING. LIFE'S ONE OF THEM.

Gambled a bit this morning at the Ilani Casino north of Vancouver. Lost but not much. Still ahead since winning 100 bucks in October was it? I only take $5 when I go.

Find photographer here

Prostate cancer news not so good. My plan is to make it to 88 or 90. However the PSA is increasing rapidly. Have telephone consult with my urologist next week. He's also more cautious in his promises. More later.

On the writing front, I'm hugely encouraged. Last three submissions of most recent short stories to the very best paying markets have garnered three rejections but all three included requests for more submissions. Same thing happened with four poems from my prostate cancer ms. Strong encouragement and invite to submit again. I know the work is good, but they also compete with the very best writers who go for publication in top markets. I might never crack those markets, but I'm in the mix now I believe. 

Three plans currently. Rework the cancer ms, put together a collection of short stories with the new ones plus a few older ones that have gathered good responses. Last, put together a collection of poetry that spans the years I've been writing poetry. The very best, the published stuff, filled in with unpublished I like. Submit these to prestigious contests.

BEATNICKING ALONG THE BEAT ROAD

Thirty stories now completed. Have been working today on my ms You Wake One Morning, Remembering. Rearranging the contents. I want to enter it into contests. Nearly 50 poems based on my dance with prostate cancer—it's discovery, treatment with radiation and hormone therapy and semi-recovery. The cancer's still there. Much reduced. My urologist says I'll die of something other than prostate cancer. Only time will tell. He's the one who likes to say, "Everyone's got to die someday."

Lately my rejections have been accompanied by requests to resubmit. Either editors are becoming kinder with their rejection letters, or I'm getting closer. I'm reading Hemingway's short stories recently, having finished Raymond Carver's. It's been a half year since a poem of mine was included in Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro's project, Washington Poetry Map. It's there near Huckleberry Mountain just north of Interstate 90. My record is pretty consistent—one or two publications a year. Nothing spectacular. Not bad for a writer who is a stranger to most, if not all, editors of literary magazines, internet as well as hard copy.

The recent photo reveals the fact I'm letting my hair grow long on the top. On top that is.

LOTS OF WORK, LOTS AND LOTS

Jeez, Louise, 82 people looked in this morning. Thank you folks. Been awhile, I know, but I've been hard at work. Spent three days straightening out the file cards I keep on all my poetry. Things were in a mess, and I found I was sending out poems I'd self-published in my two poetry books, Gray House By Cold Mountain and Tenderfoot [available Amazon or AuthorHouse]. That's a no-no in the publishing world, even though the readership of those books is extremely small.

Just finished a few minutes ago writing another short story I love to pieces called "Lennie". I'm also rewriting the poetry ms about my prostate cancer, You Wake One Morning, Remembering. I'm altering it from second person singular to first person and it will have a new undecided title. The reason I began it second person was some sort of shame or shyness about using first person. Don't ask me why. I don't understand it myself. After all, it's my cancer, my dealing with it, the humor I find in my dealing with it. In fact, I wonder if it's not too humorous in places while in other places showing too much self-pity. It's a complicated book, unlike any other cancer poetry I've read. Lot's of references to movies and personalities in the news of my days.

BEATNIK SILENTLY STUMBLES INTO ALGEBRA

As of November 30, 2018, I've stopped writing and returned to working on intermediate algebra problems. It's fun to sit in coffee shops and work problems and learn new things. When I retired in 2003 at age 66, I began working at algebra. I monitored courses at the community college in Spokane. I had the goal of learning calculus. My father was a tool designer and, of course, as a CNC machinist, I used lots of math to perform my duties. Math is in my genes so to speak.

I did not win the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize at the University of Pittsburg Press where I had submitted my ms based on my prostate cancer. The poetry was authentic and pretty decent, actually, but the competition is stiff. All the most recognized and ambitious poets submit to it, so it's no disgrace not to win. The same ms is still at the Iowa Review, and Ghoul World is still at DAW which says it will take at least 3 mos. to respond. I've still got several poetry submissions out at various literary magazines, and I do have a piece of prose history that's to be published by Geoff Peterson's in his Archipelago.

The reason I've stopped writing to be honest is that I tried to write a poem the other day. If writing is going well, the writer gets hits of emotion as he works. They reward writing. When those emotional jolts disappear, there's no impulse to continue writing. Writing is its own reward, and when one isn't being self-rewarded, it's time to take a break.

BACK TO THE STINKING WORLD OF GHOULS FOR THIS OLD BEAT

Thanks to all who continue to check in on this writer's blog. I think my muse has finally gotten through to me. Time for change. I wrote something like 150 eight line poems. Nothing much has been stirring since, but, then I'm also not reading the lucid and peaceful poetry of Chinese poets inspired by Buddhism, the Tao or Confucian thought. The end to writing poetry means that I will return to another rewrite of Ghoul World and the two item bucket list beginning next week, probably, unless this old brain forgets what it thinks it might do today next week. 

The human animal, well "me" at least, is odd. Just a month ago, I thought I had maybe a year or two ahead before the return of my high risk prostate cancer would take my life. Told I'll "probably" have 8-10 more years and die of congestive heart failure, I've gone back to obsessing about politics, and will Lebron leave Cleveland. Doctor was funny too. At one point, I said to him, "I'm not ready to go yet." A little later he said, "In 8 years you'll be a different person." Took me awhile to realize that in 7 years most all my cells will have been renewed with accompanying miscommunication failures. I might be ready to turn in my steel suit and retire from the battle against evil        

....IF?

THE SLOGGING OR DASHING BEATNIK

Thank you, Clark, for the image....

I now have enough lushis [8 line poems] to create a book. In addition, I have enough decent poems spread over the years to make at least another book. Adding in the book of poetry I created during my years with prostate cancer and the two self-published books, I have probably six books of poetry already in the can [to borrow from old film lingo]. None of them are anything like the poetry of Clark Coolidge, but poets are a varied lot. 

Ahead of me, still awaits another — the sixth or seventh — rewrite of my sci fi novel Ghoul World. I feel so many good bursts of energy as I work over the rewrites of my poems that I hate to stop to work on Ghoul World. The reworking of a novel requires long periods of slog during which I feel no reward as compared to the rewriting and creation of poetry that offer short bursts of feeling good reward. Not only that, I've been reading modern science fiction and it appears to me that my novel reveals a writer born in a past generation whose style and subject matter might be outdated. But here's a troubling thought. I've read pieces of modern sci fi written by my younger peers that reveal no familiarity with past literature when it comes to good grammatical writing. It can only be their subject matter that causes librarians to choose such poorly written novels. I don't feel any sour grapes when I note this trend. I hope it's just an observation. After all, grammar and word choice does change as the generations unfold, and a writer would be a fool not to accept that fact.

BLUEBERRIES ARE GOOD FOR WHAT AILS THE BEATNIK BOOMER

Find photog here:

Thanks all who have checked in here recently. My continuing exhaustion means that imaginative writing is still some distance in future, but I visited a new urologist today and, again, a scope was shoved up my little urethra. The good doctor found nothing abnormal in my bladder except the scar tissue one expects to find after the application of high doses of radiation aimed to defeat a "highly aggressive prostate cancer." Turns out the Flomax generic I've been taking does not treat the condition that's been depriving me of sleep and comfort for the past 5 to 6 weeks. Flomax only works when there's a blockage in the system. There appears to be no blockage, and my problem is nerve damage associated with the high doses of radiation that were needed to treat my prostate cancer. The new drug he prescribed will hopefully calm the nerves that are sending too frequent and intense messages from the nerves in my wounded bladder to my brain. Hopefully, the urgent and continuous need to pee will lessen, and I'll catch a few more winks per night. I was near tears with feelings of hope as we talked. I cry at the drop of a hat these days. Where did Mr. Masculinity disappear too? Somewhere between the doses of hormone, I suppose. Maybe by end of next month, I'll get back to the writing projects I've put on hold. 

BEATNIK BOOMER'S SPONTANEOUS AMBIVALENT HAPPINESS

I'd been trying to rewrite the prostate cancer manuscript, Up Your Ass, all morning, but the world outside my head was in a parallel universe. I was forced to squint through an opaque curtain to see my poems. I miss hit so many keys I thought my fingers were drunk. Nothing creative happening.

I'd been that way all morning, then out of nowhere by sheer coincidence my wife drives by the Starbucks where I'm "not" working, and she sees my car in the parking lot. She's on the way to visit one of her clients and only has time to say, "Hi, honey," kiss me and mention that I look tired. "Did you get enough sleep?" 

Now she's gone, and I realize yet again that this familiar feeling is the result of not getting enough sleep. Ever since the cancer treatments, my pissing problems get me up all hours of the night, and I have drugged days like this. Way too many of them. Who can work effectively under such conditions?

As if to put a exclamation point on my dilemma, an overpowering and familiar urge to defecate hits me, and I race the length of Starbucks to stave off a dirty diaper, then as I try to type this happening into the blog ... what the hell ... the same urge sends me scurrying again.

Such is the life of a prostate cancer survivor — spontaneous ambivalent happiness.

SILENT/BOOMER BEATNICKS ON

For sleeping w/o scratching itchy eyes...

I value those of you who follow this blog. Seventy persons checked in over the last 24 hours, and I apologize to all for the 14 day lapse between this and my last entry. It's been medically trying for several  weeks. At this very moment I'm having a hot flash that makes me sweat as if I've just completed a marathon while I'm seated in a very chill Starbucks. I remain in physical therapy in an attempt to gain more control over my bowel function. Monday I had cataract surgery and am now in process of recovery from that. I'm having to wear reading glasses to see this blog or read a book or newspaper. Creative work is not possible when one is straining to see. From radiation treatments for prostate cancer to bladder stone and cataract removals ... this is the most extended period of time I've ever experienced of discomfort and office visits to medical doctors, ORs and physical therapists. If I didn't feel so youthful, I'd swear I'm growing old. Okay. I laugh. But the truth is I'm not the most courageous captain of my fate. I feel like whining a lot and must exercise some control so as not to overburden my wife whose father died last Wednesday morning after a lifetime of dealing in a very brave way with Type I diabetes. Heart failure. He was a sheet metal worker, and I earned my bread as a CNC machinist. Blue collar earners, the both of us, and I think that has a lot to do with the love my wife and I share. He was a good and humble man, and I'm so grateful that he raised the woman who is my wife. I'm also happy that my cancer treatment seems to be successful for reasons beyond my own survival as you can well imagine.

Has anyone noticed how this blog has devolved from an account of a man on a bucket list quest to the diary of a sick bed? I have several creative projects in mind, including another film script. If I can just get these metaphorical catheters out of my wrist and arise from my metaphorical sick bed, more will be revealed. The screenwriting class went very well. Bye-bye and buy bonds.

SILENT BEATNIK BOOMER AND THE BARTLETT

The Bartlett bar

75 people looked in on my bucket list quest yesterday. They find it on my Facebook page, The Silent Boomer, rather than directly here, I believe. I'm still confused by Google, Facebook and Silent Boomer connectivity. I'm going to have to step away from writing for the next five days or so again. On road to Spokane again, and I can't seem to write on the road. Speaking of the road, I watched On The Road last night for a 2nd time, a faithful chronological rendering of the novel. We're visiting my father-in-law who has recently entered hospice care from complications of diabetes. My wife has had to deal with my cancer last year and now her father is in decline. Think loving thoughts. While in Spokane we have previously ordered tickets for my son's improv group at The Bartlett.

I requested and received a confirmation about my poem "The Legacy" but still waiting the contract that makes it official before I say anything here. It's been months since I sent out any of my novels to agents. It's so hard for me to take the time away from actually writing to send out my work, tailor the query letters to the agents. I know there is now a service that takes over a writer's submissions, but I am slow to pick up on it. It's like having a paid agent for agents. Where does the retrogression end? Sometimes I feel I'm right on the verge...the "verge" of what?

WALKING IN DIAPERS FEELS OKAY

At Starbucks in Portland at 28th and Burnside, I'm dressed for the walk I just finished, and it was a chilly walk. Greater Portland Area is expecting maybe some few drops of snow mixed with rain during the next few days. Found some more interesting restaurants along 28th between Burnside and Sandy Blvd. Found Epif, a vegan restaurant with South American flair that has been advertising on PIFF screens. Tonight, however, I'm going to dine Italian. Saw a place with a vegetarian pasta dish...tomatoes, broccoli, you name it with zita pasta I think. Worked on rewrite of Ghoul World some little bit in early afternoon, and 70 people checked into this blog since yesterday. Thank you who are following my bucket list saga. Movie I'm seeing at PIFF tonight is Life After Life. Sent out a few more things recently to be considered for publication. I really don't do enough of the "sending out". Life is good, even in diapers. It's great walking the streets of a liberal modern city not caring if you poop your pants because it won't show through your diapers.

REMEMBERING A CHILDHOOD WITH TIGE IN THE BASEMENT

"That's My Dog Tige, He Lives In A Shoe. I'm Buster Brown, Look For Me in There Too" When I was a kid, I had to do chores in the basement frequently, and I listened to a radio show as I worked. Buster Brown shoes advertised on that show. Froggy the magic frog who twanged his "magic twanger" was also on that show. No double entendre intended. 

HO HUM, HO HUM, IT'S OFF TO REWRITE HO HUM I GO. I must admit that my writing energy is at low ebb. Part of the decline is because we were out of town over the Christmas holiday, and I'm trying to get myself back into harness, but it keeps slipping off my back. Some of my lack of interest is a hangover, I believe, from the cancer scare. For many months, I lived in a bag or sack, a psychic state of existence for sure. No certain future lay ahead for me.  

To compensate for my low energy, I'm enclosing a poem I wrote for the poetry chapbook Up Your Ass about my prostate cancer. Perhaps the last piece of original writing I've done. I'm not happy with it so it ends with an ellipsis that suggests future work? Perhaps also I need to rethink the title.

BEATNIK BOOMER DOESN'T DIE. NOW WHAT?

Nothing could be more boring than hearing about another damn Booming rewrite. Right? But that's all I have to report. I'm rewriting Ghoul World. 

I've had a couple more rejections come in of work I'd submitted only to the most prestigious and paying markets. What do I expect? My work is nothing like what passes for writing these days. It's not young enough and it's style, of necessity, does not ring true in a youthful mind. As I think of the style of my writing, I realize how cosmopolitan most young writers are. I'd class my story as appealing to a Richard Hugo or James Welch audience of old. One of my best stories, and I know it's well written, is from the pov of a drifter and blue collar dude who finds himself working in boom town Gillette Wyoming. He befriends a naif young veteran who gets himself involved with a very troubled and promiscuous female. How it works out must remain a mystery as the story is a mystery that never gets solved.

Another writing problem is how to finish the poetry book [more likely chapbook] Up Your Ass about the 8 month cancer bout I just finished dealing with. I have no interest currently to write a concluding poem, but I feel the series requires one. It's almost a disappointment that it won't end in my death. I know...how could I say that? Well, writing requires a conclusion, and I'm not ready to conclude yet. Happy trails to you...so Roy Rogers would say. 

THE SILENT BOOMER AND BILL MURRAY ON THE SAME PAGE

Wonderful Friday night, my wife's home from work, and we just watched Bill Murray being awarded the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Award, and isn't it funny to watch an old dude like Bill and wonder how he grew so old while you remain so young? Speaking of which, I turned 79 this month on the 20th, and I'm still pursuing my goal fiercely, when I'm not weeping for myself, to get someone other than myself to publish a novel I've written. 


I'm slowly rewriting a short story from a first person narrative into a combined third person/omniscient pov, and I've even sent off a couple of haikus to haiku magazines. I've got a hundred of them at least. These last two days I've been working on another prostate cancer poem for Up Your Ass, and I'm beginning to understand what I'm trying to do. I'm layering in historical personages, friends, details from my own and others lives and historical moments and surrounding them with my mortality and letting them sit side by side to percolate together, hoping that something enticing will show up to stimulate a reader's mind. I no longer experience those powerful moments when words are summoned from out of nowhere by emotion and bonded in metaphor to mean something else. I guess imagination still works, but much more gently. Why else would Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Gabby Hayes, Nancy and her "Ronnie" Reagan appear together in the poem I'm working on? The inspiration is still there, but it doesn't torture me so much. 

BEAT BOOMER'S BUCKET LIST BOGGED DOWN

In the last seven days I crapped my pants twice. Fortunately the accidents occurred at home as I rushed from my living room recliner to the bathroom. The accidents were distressing, and I've bought adult diapers. Aside from painful urination which I tolerate pretty well, the second side effect that troubles me most is fatigue, so much so as to soften my acuity and make writing nearly impossible at times. As a writer I tell myself I ought to be able to describe how these occurrences distress me, how they play on my mind and emotions. I finally summarized it to myself this afternoon as I drove to my radiation treatment. A month ago, I felt like a virile youthful—for 78—attractive male who still enjoyed sex with his wife and thought of himself as funny and comparably confident, happier than at any time in his life while looking forward to achieving his single bucket item. Yesterday, after the 2nd accident, I was badly deflated and imagined a much decreased enjoyment of my final years, however long that might be. It was a gloomy appraisal, one which I don't like and one I'm trying to resist. Just writing it down helps me a great deal.

The upshot of what I'm getting at is that until treatment is over on August 31, I will not push myself to write but will concentrate on limited exercise, diet and pampering myself, plus meeting my responsibilities at home. I will be drifting sideways and making little progress on my goal to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine before I kick the bucket. I'll write only when strongly moved and in a fairly alert state of mind. Following is a list of potential side effects of radiation treatment. Ain't they a kick in the pants?

• Frequent urination
• Difficult or painful urination
• Blood in the urine
• Urinary leakage
• Abdominal cramping
• Diarrhea
• Painful bowel movements
• Rectal bleeding
• Rectal leaking
• Fatigue
• Sexual dysfunction, including diminished erectile function or decrease in the volume of semen
• Skin reactions (similar to a sunburn)
• Secondary cancers in the region of the radiation

WRITING UNDER THE CYBERKNIFE

Today in a couple of hours, I get my first treatment with the Cyberknife. Exercised early today at Firstenberg Center and have tried for several hours to get some writing done on poetry collection Up Your Ass and later on my novel about dysfunctional relationships The Porn Writer. I see that I'm unable to concentrate very well so I'll just go home and get a shower and take it easy until I have to set off for PeaceHealth Hospital in Vancouver. I'm told I will have to lie perfectly motionless for half an hour while the procedure is completed, but, even if I do move, the roboticized arm stops and recalculates the position of my prostate in order to continue to treat the cancer with high doses of radiation. I recall when we Americans were all in a tizzy about Strontium 90 drifting into America from Chinese atom bomb testing. Now, I'm hoping that radiation will kill the cancer cells that threaten to kill me. Nothing ever changes except change.

BEATNIK BOOMER BEGINS 6th [or 7th] REWRITE OF PORN WRITER

Ten days I've let pass without an entry. Sorry, but I'm keeping busy. I just began the sixth [or 7th] rewrite of The Porn Writer, and I didn't finish the 5th [or 6th] rewrite. My friend poet Geoff Peterson is visiting from Tucson, and it was his comment that caused me to return to "go" and start again. He made some sense about the history of an MFA in my narrator's past that made good sense. So I began again, and I'm happy with it. I had begun the novel with the idea Frank held an MFA then took it out because I thought the idea was cliched. Now I'm putting it back in again. Geoff's considerations had to do with potential audience, then, for other reasons of authenticity, I saw a good reason for it's remaining in the novel, because the real center of the novel is "dysfunctional relationships" that are divorced from the MFA considerations. The MFA is in it only to add to his sense of failure and inadequacy that have plagued all his relationships. 

Reason for relief above. As for the aggressive prostate cancer that threatens to lengthen the odds for my succeeding in my lone bucket list item to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine: I finally begin radiation treatments this coming Monday, July the 18th when the Cyberknife will shoot a first heavy dose of radiation into my cancerous prostate. It's only taken from April 25th when my primary doctor found the nodule on my prostate till now.... 

KAISER PERMANENTE IS TRYING TO KILL ME

The photo is of my radiologist specialist, M.D. Faisal Siddiqui. 

 Hanging in there. Got only an hour of rewrite in yesterday, July 6, on The Porn Writer. Now midway into "Chapter 19 - The Tender Trap" after spending the morning and early afternoon getting a scan and an MRI in preparation for irradiation of prostate and lymph nodes. I've been tattooed...three red dots on my stomach for radiation machine alignments. I felt very vulnerable in the hospital setting yesterday. Usually, I have little trouble walking through tests and paperwork and listening to instructions, but I felt shaky old yesterday some of the time. 

As for my bucket list item. I think I've fallen down on submitting my novels to agents. Will have to knuckle down on that part of the process. I like the sound of that word, "knuckle".  

Yesterday also I put in an appeal to Kaiser Permanente to overturn their negative ruling on the Cyberknife. This morning I called Kaiser to see if they got the paperwork. Yes, they got it, but the appeal won't be looked at for 14 days. What? I'm sitting here with my prostate showing perineural invasion. [In pathology, perineural invasion refers to cancer spreading to the space surrounding a nerve. It is common in ... prostate cancer and....] Those little terrorists can and probably are escaping into my flesh and bones as I write this, and Kaiser wants me to wait two more weeks? I yelp loudly, then Kaiser tells me they'll have to see if my situation "QUALIFIES" for a 72 hour evaluation and it'll take 72 hours to make that decision. What the hell!!