Sixteen Days

XVI

‘A robin red breast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage…

… Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.’
—William Blake "Auguries of Innocence"


A mere sixteen days remain until the air hits my brain.
Category > Adding Insult > Injury:
I learned recently that not only are they taking off part of my skull, but that a catheter will be involved. Ben Franklin invented the medical catheter, a useful instrument assuredly, but if I ever find his ghost we are going to have words about certain design flaws. I didn’t squawk when they informed me about the tube that will be put in my neck for five days post-op. It will drain off cerebrospinal fluid and keep the Eternal Headache down to a surly roar. Fair enough. But come on…really…there has to be a better way than shoving a latex hose up my perfectly innocent, Exit-Only fleshgadget. Even the monkeys we used as astronauts were treated better than that. A catheter is the medical equivalent of running a pipe into a car’s exhaust to keep it from fouling the garage. Just who is benefiting from this gross indignity that masquerades as a medical procedure? Should I stand for this?

For the first time in many years I can sing the line …‘aint got no money and I ‘aint got no hair…and be honest. I’m not exactly sure what Bowie had on his mind when he wrote that, but it now has a whole new meaning for me. I haven’t cut my hair for years. Not that I spent any great amount of time preening, often it would end up in a top-knot secured by a Bic pen. But still, Dick Cheney would have extended his satanic contract to have it [face it Dick, you know you want it]
Blessed with Gayle’s gene for hair I had grown quite a caramel colored mane, down to my beltline. And not a ragged old-hippy rat’s nest either. Okay, so it was a little split-endy; but all the ladies liked it and that was good enough for me. Well, I went with Gayle last Saturday and had it all cut off. I’m donating it to the Cancer Society, to make a wig for someone who went bald due to chemotherapy, someone who understands better than I the true meaning of the word Suffering.
I thought that I would be traumatized somehow, that cutting my mane would injure my already struggling self-esteem. Long-term sickness wreaks mayhem with such things like happiness, independence and self-worth. You know, the foundations of what make us human. But it wasn’t the bruising symbol of grief and infirmity that I expected. Maybe I am maturing a little, but if I can’t find a better way to let my Freak flag fly than to have long hair I am really in trouble. And far better to do it on my terms than to make some nurse, who has better things to do, chop off my Freak flag.

There are no guarantees, from one moment to the next, that life will remain as it is. The life we are given is as transitory as that of a velvet-winged moth. For years I treated life, perceived it, as if one day would follow the next would follow the next…and any great change could be seen on the horizon. So many people, especially we here in America, are taught to believe that disasters come with an emergency broadcast warning on the television; we are taught that not far away is an emergency room, with emergency people, just waiting for us to have an emergency. Yet for all our vigilance, we are as wholly unprepared for real emergencies as we are for epiphanies. How can you really prepare for realities such as Cancer, Plane Crash, Rape, Brain Malformation.
Havoc persists like sunshine, despite our fervent belief in an orderly universe.
And those who have grim familiarity with the true modus operandi of Life, those who have come face to leering, laughing face with the capricious majesty of Cause and Effect will tell you no differently. They will tell you to bask in the sunshine.

Helen Keller believed that Security is mostly a superstition…Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure…Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. And she would know.

I don’t pretend to Helen’s insight or wisdom; nor do I question it, she is a survivor and her ghost is not to be trifled with.
I suspect that soon I will have the opportunity to meet the twin titans of Cause and Effect.
Then we’ll see who does the laughing. Then we’ll see, in sixteen days.
—End Transmission—
Dawn McKenzie