Sometimes I wonder if some people have any clue what they actually mean when they say or write something?
Example:A Life Spent ReadingPOETIC OUTLAWS
“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”― Annie Dillard
There is no shortage of good days.It is good lives that are hard to come by.A life of good days lived in the sensesis not enough. The life of sensationis the life of greed; it requires moreand more.The life of the spiritrequires less and less; time isample and its passage sweet.Who would call a day spentreading a good day?But a life spent reading-- that is a good life.
And a life spent living?And writing about it?
It turned out yesterday that the gastroenterological doctor/surgeon I went to see was in surgery and I was interviewed by his nurse practitioner, who listened attentively to my explanation of my history with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which suddenly onset one day in 1969, when I was 26, and medicine had no answer for it, and when sometimes I found an alternative treatment that caused by gut to feel better, before long there was such a fierce, terrifying, physical reaction that I had to stop using what was helping, and I concluded whatever was causing it convinced me it wanted to be left alone.
The nurse practitioner nodded, yes.
(I did not tell her that in my
spirit code 26 is the sacred number for God, and that on the 26th anniversary of the day I buried my son, who had died of sudden infant death syndrome when I entered my last semester at the University of Alabama School of Law in Tuscaloosa, his spectacular beautiful elegy poem burst out of me.)
I told her that about 8 months ago, the IBS changed dramatically, and it felt like there was a knot, or cramp, or tear where my descending colon connects with my sigmoid colon, and it became much more physically rough on me.
I told her that my regular gastroenterologist had told me last month that colon cancer takes 10 years to develop and he would not do a colonoscope exam, because he did one two years ago.
The nurse practitioner shook her head and said cancer can come on much quicker than that, and she scheduled me for a colonoscopy on September 11, of all days, and for an MRI of my gut.
Of course, it may turn out I don’t have cancer, and something else is going on in my gut that needs attention, or there is nothing that can be done- but that’s not the point. The point is, I would be negligent, reckless even, not to seek a second opinion, given just how awful I feel most of each day and night, which is so very much rougher than all those years with IBS.
Let me back up and start over.
In 2019, I my pee stream weakened noticeably, and I called my old urologist at home, thinking I had called his office, and his wife answered and he got on the phone with me and said he had retired and never was so bored in his life, and I should call his former medical partner, which I did, and he did a PSA test and it was 22, which is out of sight, and he knew I had prostate cancer.
He did a biopsy and confirmed it, and I was offered surgery to remove the cancer, which might or might not get all of it, and if it didn’t get all of it, I would need radiation and/or chemotherapy treatment. Or, which he recommended because of my advanced years, I have radiation treatment, which I elected to do after talking with a retired oncologist, who was the father of one of my son-in-laws’ cousins.
The radiation treatment took almost 5 weeks, and by the end of it I was so weak that I could barely move about, but it killed the cancer, and my prostate, and what little remained of my libido, and over time my PSA dropped to .05 and held there through my last checkup about six weeks ago. The radiation left scar tissue in my urethra and every now and then my urologist dilates and stretches my urethra so that I can pee okay.
Let me back up and start over.
When I was 31, I developed a headache that caused me to scream, and my internist put me in a hospital and I was given a codeine tablet each morning and that killed the headache until it returned the next morning and I was screaming and given another codeine tablet. After three days of that, my internist came by with an ear, nose and throat doctor, and I told them what was going on and they left.
After taking the codeine tablet the next morning, I called the ENT doctor and told him I thought I had a sinus infection, because the headache reminded me of a headache I once experienced on a commercial airliner at high altitude. He said he thought I had a sinus infection, and I said please prescribe something to deal with that, before I’m turned into a drug addict.
I started the antibiotic that day, and in a couple of days the headache was gone. The ENT doctor said for me to call him after the prescription ran out and he would schedule surgery in my nose. After the surgery, he said my nose was all messed up, he had to break the septum and straighten it out, and he had to strip my sinuses. He saved my life. We figured the sinus trouble dated back to my being hit in the right eye socket by a hard hit line drive baseball when I was 11.
So you see I have serious history with physicians, and I know when I need one, and I know when I need a second opinion.
Let me back up and start over.
When I was 19, the internist saved my life after I contracted dysentery while running a summer vacation route for a the route salesman at the Golden Flake potato chip company, which my father owned. While I was in the hospital under an IV antibiotic drip, my father called my hospital room from New Orleans where he was on business. My mother answered the the phone and told him what was going on and handed the phone to me. My father said, “That’s a really interesting way to get out going to work.” My mother heard it and grabbed the phone away from me and gave him a piece of her mind.
After my son died, I had an opportunity to practice law with a trial lawyer in Troy, Alabama, where my father and his father grew up. My father and the trial lawyer were childhood friends. The trial lawyer had had a son die, and he knew what I was going through. He offered me the spare office in his law office, the use of his legal secretary, and he would refer to me the cases that he was referring to other lawyers in Troy.
My father’s grandmother died, and the graveside service was in Troy. My wife, now pregnant again, and I drove from Tuscaloosa to Troy for the service. The trial lawyer was at the cemetery, and he greeted us. I saw my father and his father over the way and the trial lawyer and I walked over to them. The trial offered his right hand to my father, to shake hands, and my father and his father turned their backs on us. The trial lawyer looked at me, we walked away and I apologized to him. After the service, my wife and I drove back to Tuscaloosa, and I was a fucking wreck.
I had written a paper in my legal philosophy and ethics course about being a country lawyer. My father asked me why I wanted to practice law in a small town, and I said I had a lock and key offer with the Troy trial lawyer, and I would get to hunt and fish a lot more than I would in Birmingham.
My father frowned, said that was no reason to do it. He sent me to his lawyer, who grew up in a small town. During our conversation, my father’s lawyer said the way to find out in a small town who is fucking whose wife is to drive around the golf course on Saturday night and see who is in the cars parked there.
A law professor told me of a federal judge in Birmingham losing his law clerk, and I drove to Birmingham to meet Judge Clarence W. Allgood. We talked mostly about fishing and hunting, and he hired me.
I drove back to Troy and told the trial lawyer I had been offered a clerkship with Judge Allgood and I was going to take it. The trial lawyer said, after what happened at the cemetery, he figured I might change my mind about practicing law in Troy, and it was a great honor to clerk for a federal judge.
How my life changed in an instant was, sitting in the chair behind my desk in my law clerk office on my mother’s birthday in March 1969, I felt the urge to poop, and I went to the bathroom at the end of the hall, and when I tried to poop, nothing happened, and I exclaimed to myself that I was constipated! (I did not know I would be constipated for the rest of my life.)
As time passed, I was interviewed by several law firms in Birmingham, and by the US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and I could not make a decision.
As it neared time to leave, Judge Allgood tried to talk me out of going to work for my father. Judge Allgood said I could be his law clerk for another year. I thanked him and said I knew I had to move on.
I was so beaten down mentally and emotionally, and I felt so bad all the time physically, that going to work for my father seemed like the safe and smart move, because I had a wife and a young child, and my wife was pregnant, and I didn’t see any way in my condition that I would do okay being a lawyer.
So, do you see where it started?
When I was 19 and caught dysentery running a Golden Flake salesman’s vacation route, and how my father reacted to it, and I did not get THE MESSAGE.
That’s some sho’ nuff’ hellacious karma, ain’t it?
And some sho nuff' hellacious collateral damage: my wife and our two children; my later wives; my law practice after I quit working at Golden Flake; and living with IBS and its mutations for the rest of my days, it seems.
Yet if all of that had not happened, I might still be living in Mountain Brook, aka The Tiny Kingdom. Or, maybe I would be nuts. Or, maybe I would be dead.
I would not have become a writer.
I would not have gone on a journey in search of healing, my soul and God.
I would not have written A FEW REMARKABLE ALABAMA PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN, in which Judge Allgood is the first hero and my father’s lawyer is the last hero. https://afewremarkablealabamapeople.blogspot.com/
I would not be the guy who writes this blog.
A tech buddy and I would not do cheeky non-profit, ad-free The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast, which can be accessed at YouTube and gets around 500,000 complete watches per episode in the Torrent universe, in about 50 languages, with subtitles. We don’t allow YouTube to run ads and we don’t have access to Google/Youtube analytics for the podcast. We pissed off a lot of political and religious people. For a while, the podcast was banned in Russia, Belarus, India, Australia, Red China, North Korea and Islamic countries.
The two newest episodes:
But for all that happened, about 12 of my not for the faint of heart non-fiction, verse, fiction and stranger than fiction books, and 2 law school exam questions, would not be free reads in about 50 languages, Braille and audio at archive.org, which is run by American colleges, and in two similar libraries overseas.
The free internet libraries specialize in out of print books and books by authors not seeking payment. On a 1-5 like-dislike rating scale, my books are 4.2-5. My books also are free reads in an Oceania free internet library based in Australia, and in a free internet library based in England, which serves all of Europe. Combined, my digitized books get several thousand complete reads a month.
Thanks to the internet, Google, my tech buddy, YouTube, Torrent, and the free internet libraries, I might live almost forever in cyberspace :-), after my writings never made me a living wage and I knew in my bone marrow what a starving artist truly was.
I read my poetry at many Key West Poetry Guild monthly meetings, including these four poems, which told me I was in for it. :-).
Thanks to the internet, Google, my tech buddy, YouTube, Torrent, and the free internet libraries, I might live almost forever in cyberspace :-), after my writings never made me a living wage and I knew in my bone marrow what a starving artist truly was.
I read my poetry at many Key West Poetry Guild monthly meetings, including these four poems, which told me I was in for it. :-).
"Living Poets"Dead poets are poets who never writeWho obey shoulds and oughtsWho live to please othersWho value money over GodWho die without ever having livedDeath is their markDead poets are remembered by the living.Living poets are remembered by timeDead poets never sing their songLiving poets never stop singing itThe difference between the two is this:One worships fear, the other lifeTo be a dead poet is hardIt requires being someone elseTo be a living poet is easyIt only means being myselfOne choice is hell, the other heavenThat is what is meant by free will(1991)"The Mockingbird"I happened upon a mockingbirdsinging its fool head off –I asked it how and why it sang?But all it did was look ahead,all it did was sing.It never turned to see if I was watching,or listened for money jingling in my pockets,or asked if I liked its music,or expected a recording contract –It was too busy singingto pay any attention to me.Thus did I learnthe greatest sin of allis to kill a mockingbird.(1992)“Rules”Who invented the rule that poetry must rhyme, have pentameter, be cast into verse? Yes, who invented that really silly rule? Surely it wasn’t the maker of the first stone — otherwise there’d be no stone to break all those slaving rules!(1994)“Mission Nearly Impossible”Only fools rush inwhere angels fear to tread,But if there were no fools,Who’d lead the angels?(1994)
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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