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.

WHAT A CREATIVELY WRITING OLD COOT READS

The following is a selective list of books I've read over the last  two years. I'm an eclectic reader. I don't understand all that I read, but I do credit myself for trying! Some are rereads:

Franny and Zoe by Salinger
Breaking The Spell by Daniel Dennett
An American Trilogy (all three novels in Philip Roth's trilogy, the 60s so real)
Foundation by Asimov 
Deeper Into Movies, Pauline Kael 
Axis sci fi by Robert Wilson
She Left Me In The Middle of Nowhere great poetry by pal Geoff Peterson (on Amazon)
The Drunkard's Walk, science by Leonard Mlodinow
"Evolutionary Social Psychology" in Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, ed. by David Buss
365 Days by Ronald Glaser (Vietnam vet personal history)
The Falling Man by Dan DeLillo
Greatest Show On Earth and Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins (both evolution) 
Pentimento, An Unfinished Woman and Scoundrel Time by Lillian Hellman (memoirs and interesting insider look at the McCarthy Era)
Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut 
Feathers by Thor Hanson (a book about the evolution of feathers) 
The Darkness Around Us Is Deep (poetry of William Stafford)
Darwin a bio. by Desmond and Moore
Harmony scifi by Project Itoh
Idoru  scifi by William Gibson
The Emotional Brain and The Synaptic Self  both by Joseph Ledoux (neuroscience which has influenced my writing and my understanding of the human condition)
Einstein: his life and universe by W. Isaacson (excellent book which capsulizes his theories as well as Einstein's bio)
 

The writer among his books

That last Einstein book is very representative of how reading works for me. For a fraction of a day, I almost grasp his theories. By the next day, the knowledge is lost among the synapses. The older I get, the more advanced is this process of forgetting, and I do not like it one bit!  

As I said...if I remembered a fraction of what I read, I'd be a man of wide and deep knowledge, a man for all seasons, but, genetically, that was not to be my fate, so I read and recall mere fragments and am forced to build my flawed picture of the Cosmos and my place in it from scraps and personal suffering. When I was younger my most anguished moments of self-knowledge came when I knew I would never have the understanding or reputation of a genius. Laugh at me—I finally did—but when I was a youth and often in my cups, that knowledge was a source of ceaseless anguish.