Woman on pill pregnant with quads and she already has a seven-month-old. ai yi yi!
poem for 2.4.05:
Ode to Broken Things
by Pablo Neruda
translated by Jodey Bateman
note: I watched Il Postino for the first time the other day. Ah, what a wonderful movie! How could I have let it go so long before seeing it? If I did not love Neruda before (which I did), I surely loved him after seeing this movie.
To continue on with my obnoxious self-absorption, I’m pleased to announce that my teeth are in fine working order. I have one teeny-tiny cavity (which is truly a minor miracle given the amount of candy I eat and wine I drink) which will be filled on Monday. The hygenist did not, as predicted, get on my case about my aggressive brushing, rather she said, “We’ll get along just fine. I like people who are obsessive about brushing.”
The dentist and hygenist both agreed that my gums are not bad at all and that I do not, at this juncture, need to worry about becoming a wizened, toothless old crone before I hit the age of 40.
This news was of great comfort to me. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve awoken in the middle of the night worried about my front teeth falling out. Worried that I would have to walk around with clacking dentures, using polident and worrying over poppy seeds getting underneath the bridge, and keeping my teeth in a little cup on my nightstand while I slept.
Hello. My name is Myfanwy Collins and I am an aggressive brusher.
Yes, that’s right, today I have a dentist appointment. A routine cleaning, at which the hygenist will chastise me for being an aggressive brusher. I like to brush frequenly–five or six times a day if I had my druthers, but now that I have been labelled “aggressive” I am only allowed to brush twice a day. I find it extremely unsatisfying.
Like most people, I am not fond of dentist visits. And, to be quite honest, many of the dentists I’ve gone to in the past have not done much to enhance my already wary view of them. Take my first dentist, for example. At age four, he set me down a path of distrust and frustration. Here is what happened:
My next door neighbor and friend, Peter, (hey Peter, if you’re reading this! Remember me? How’s your big sister? Hey, do you remember the time she pulled down your pants in the driveway and licked your penis in front of a group of kids and said it tasted “salty”? My sisters and I still talk about that. And remember how your little sister was always “falling down the stairs” and ending up with bruises all over? And remember that birthday cake your mother made with all of the small, choking hazzard toys baked inside of it? Gee, I miss living next door to your fucked up family because it made my own seem so normal) and I were playing in his backyard. I found a metal pipe and held it up to my mouth and pretended it was a horn out of which I was saying, “toot, toot.” And good ole Peter thought it would be fun if he took the croquet mallet he was holding and smashed into the pipe, knocking it into my two front baby teeth. Ouchie.
Anyway, when my mother brought me to the dentist and explained the situation, he examined my by then blackened teeth and said, “Too much candy.”
I felt completely betrayed.
Since then I have been treated by many dentists, including a dentist who performed the most time consuming root canal in history (I think it was over six or seven weeks, once a week and in the end I lost the tooth anyway). He was an interesting fellow. I’ll never forget the time he was passing a kidney stone, and told me so, during one of our sessions. Ah yes! I felt in such good, shaky and sweating hands!
And here I am today, eagerly awaiting what’s in store. Today is the day I meet my new dentist and learn what a fuck up I am for brushing too aggressively and not flossing enough. Can’t wait!
Really, I don’t like to make fun of authors just because they are successful, but I laughed out loud at this review and felt I must share. The review–Crichton Mad: A review of the distorted plot and politics in Michael Crichton’s State of Fear–is GREAT in that it not only pokes fun at a book that takes itself too seriously, but also reveals the potential errors and assumptions:
State of Fear presents two scenarios, one fictional and one allegedly factual. Crichton spends too much of his time lecturing at us, trying to convince us of the second. Meanwhile, the first is tossed off, sloppy and flat. In the end, neither is remotely plausible.
The result is a 15-page political pamphlet of questionable scholarly provenance bloated into a near-600-page novel of minimal literary merit.
If you have been following BBC News science and technology writer Ivan Noble’s Tumour Diary documenting his fight with cancer, then you probably know now that he has died (if you haven’t, the diaries are archived so you can still read them). I’m sad that his family has lost him and yet I feel hopeful that such a generous soul has raised awareness by sharing his battle with the world.
p.s. I feel really lame for whining about a headache in light of his brave struggle.
She grabbed his arm just above the elbow. Her bony fingers clasped, unclasped, clasped, unclasped–like one’s thighs in that second after climax, wanting that tiny bit more. Wanting for that feeling of pressure and numbness not to end. Never to end. Oh God no.
And as she let go of his arm for the second time, she opened up to him about how her baby had died–her only son. How he had been over there–across the cold, gray ocean, over the dark mountains, beyond the snowy trees–deep in the dry and crystalline desert.
How he had died alone, on a dusty street in a city where she could not reach him. A street she had not even heard of before she learned of blood leaking out of a hole in his stomach turning the pavement red and sticky (the blood would leave a stain much like an oil leak would).
She told how he had taken his last breath among strangers and how his blue, blue eyes had glazed over like a pond in winter.
All of this had happened, she said, without her knowing.
She grabbed his arm again. (Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze went her fingers like a blood pressure pump. The arm tightened and flexed ever so slightly.)
She had only felt, that day (or night, or whenever it was) a tug deep inside of her, in her bones almost and then she knew he was gone. But before she had heard for certain she had gone on smiling on that day of the death of her only son because that is what one did on any normal day. One played tennis. One ate lunch at the club. One bickered with one’s husband (who was not the father of her son, after all) about something inconsequential (like quitting smoking, for example) over cocktails.
She let go of the now limp arm.
The new Ink Pot online has lots of great stuff:
As a self-diagnosed hypochondriac, I have a tendency, when I am truly ill, to let things go really far before I admit it (and a reverse tendency to question whether I have every improbable disease when I am clearly not ill. For example, last summer I was convinced I had rabies). I felt, late last week, that I was getting ill but I wasn’t sure if I was really getting sick or if I was thinking I was getting sick, so I denied it and then boom, I ended up with this disgusting virus.
All day on Sunday, I felt that something was not right. I was anxious, panicked even and didn’t feel like I could or should rest. Then the headache started—right around 3PM. I thought it was just going to be a normal headache and treated it as such (I usually put on a wool hat, fill up my hot water bottle and put it on my forehead and lie down) but it was not a normal headache.
It was the mother of all headaches.
It wasn’t even a migraine. It was some sort of mutation of migraine and sinus headache. The pain was everywhere on my head—even behind my ears and at the base of my neck. I stayed in a dark and cool room with my dog by my side. Poor Allen running back and forth to check on me and try new things to see if they would take away my pain, feeling it almost as though it were his, too.
I tried petting the dog to take my mind off the pain but it only worked momentarily. Then I tried lying on my back with my arm over my head. Didn’t work. On my stomach, with my head buried under the pillow. Didn’t work. On my side. Didn’t work.
Here’s one that did work, if only for a few minutes: an old holdover position from childhood (I had a “nervous stomach”—this is what the doctor called it when I was five—as a child and had many stomach aches. Have we any wonder where the hypochondria came from?)—I tucked my knees up under my stomach and put my head into an almost handstand position—ah! The pressure was just about right to take away the pain for a while. But, as I said, this was fleeting.
One or two times I was able to focus on something else for a minute or two and get rid of the pain, but then I would remember it.
And then there was that moment, the dark one, when I thought or said aloud even, I would rather be dead than feel this pain. And my dog looked me in my eyes, telling me to take it back. To not wish for that. I took it back but it stayed there, lingering on the fringes of the pain, asking to be let back in, this thought.
And then came the vomiting. Horrible, wave upon wave, my body hot and cold and just when I would think it was done it would start again. Allen was about to call a priest for an exorcism, when it stopped.
And then sleep, oblivion. Wake up and the headache, while not gone, had changed to a normal headache. A headache one could deal with with advil and a cap and hotwater bottle.
That was yesterday. And today, I feel almost back to normal. My headache has turned to sinus pressure, my nausea is mostly gone. I took a walk and remembered how good it is to not be in pain.
I thought of how we women are programmed to take pain. It is part of our body’s training, probably so that we can make it through childbirth without losing our minds. Some of the stories you hear, about ripping, tearing, babies caught on the way out, hours and hours of brutal, excruciating pain and the relief. Coming through pain is like birth, being born.
Every month we relive and retrieve a certain amount of pain and realize that our bodies are functioning correctly. I feel a twinge in my ovary and know that I am ovulating. Fire running down my thighs and up into my womb and I know that I am about to get my period. I have learned to pay attention to it all. This is a gift. Often a horrible one, a gift we would rather return, but a gift nonetheless. And I do wonder what will be there when it’s gone?
And with this virus, too, my body did what was expected of it. It fought it and released it. It showed me that something was wrong and then it let it go. When I thought of death, I believe I was doing what is expected of me, as well—some genetic code, which tells us just how much we can stand. Typically, I can stand a lot and have a strong desire to live but this was different. I was tested and while some may say I failed, I believe I learned my limit or found that I have a further limit yet to test.
Reminder: Today is the last day that you can submit your vote for the storySouth The Million Writers Award.
Congratulations to the lovely and amazing Jordan Rosenfeld. Her radio show was just awarded an NEA grant: Local literary show gets $10,000 NEA grant, recognition for RP station.
myfanwy collins 