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Book Review: M Train by Patti Smith

M Train is the sweetest, funniest, cutest, sanest portrait I have ever read.  There is not one word in excess.

I smile, I cry, I shake my head in disbelief as I read it, completely amazed that Mrs. Smith is saying this, and that she is who she is.

Review:   Five trillion stars.  Wonderful Read.  Wonderful Book.

Roadies

(a new one on Showtime)

Just when I thought I couldn’t love Luke Wilson any more…another sweet insightful amazing project for him and the whole crew…especially if you (the viewer) has ever been around that scene at all…it’ll probably make you smile…all night  :)

the tiniest of dialogues on World Peace

Today is a Tuesday morning.  I have the air conditioning on, and the door open.  Very wasteful, but cool, and with refreshing clean air.  That’s one thing that’s hard about living in Charleston.  Once it starts getting hot out (now), you have to blast the air conditioning to live and breathe, and basically never get fresh air, unless you do what I’m doing, and throw caution to the wind.

I can’t tell you how amazing it’s been driving all the travelers around for the past year.  Living in a regional place has its perks (cuisine and geography, for two) but for someone who is not a native, its hard every now and then.

I think we all use what we have to siphon our aggression and frustration.  Meaning if I am a Southerner and I feel bad, I may from time to time spew some hate about Northerners.  Just because I need somewhere for my hate to go.  It could be black/white, gay/straight, rich/poor, but I think it’s a quite normal, if not pretty, human habit.

So for me, a Northerner living in the South, when the novelty wore off, about four years into it, I started getting slightly annoyed and even hurt at all the (what seemed) unearned bad feelings coming my way from the locals.  But then I started driving for Uber (no this is not an advertisement) and I feel normal again.

Yes, there are trillions of people in the world who are not Southern by birth and this past year I think I’ve met about a third of them.  Hooray!!!  And Southerners are probably saying just leave if you don’t like it.  But I do like it.  That’s the thing.  

And besides, I think it happens everywhere.  Hate.  I think it’s a by-product of frustration.  And feeling scared.

Every day I try to, in whatever way I can, limit my own feelings of frustration and fear, so that I can be a good person, and a generous person and helpful person.  And I look around me, I see people who are so nice, and I think you know they should be nice.  Look at their lives, look at all they have, and all they are able to do, there is no reason they should not be nice, supportive and kind to everyone they meet.

And then I look around and I see people who have nothing and who are struggling so hard, at every turn, and I wonder how can they be nice to anyone?  Their lives are so hard.

Anyway, for my part, I just try to do the best I can.  If I am feeling hateful, I try to think, what am I frustrated about?  What, in me/my life, can I change.  And no change is never easy, but little by little, it is possible, I have found, to make a difference.

"Behind every great man, is a woman rolling her eyes" - Jim Carrey

Had my annual mammogram recently.  For whatever blessed reason, I wasn’t that worried about it, going into the exam.  I did not have my exam last year, because my young female doctor affirmed that Some Institution had now concluded that mammograms were needed only every other year.  Finally, I thought at the time.  Mammograms.  I told my boyfriend, I really wish you were in that room with me.  I think you would be pretty surprised to see me, all naked, and hunched up, and squished this way and that.  It is really quite unbelievable.

That said, this is a hard topic for me.  As I am sure it is for a lot of women.  So much of breast cancer prevention and awareness just seems so intuitively wrong, on so many levels.  OK, so you want to radiate me once a year, in hopes of preventing a major disease?  Every time I do it, I think in ten years (5, 15…20?) this whole procedure will be archaic, something like bloodletting, and we will all look back and think, I can’t believe we did that, what were we thinking?

And don’t get me going on Susan B. Komen, and pink ribbons, and breast cancer awareness…again, it’s a hard topic.  Because so many women do get sick, and no one, apparently, is immune, and everything, quite honestly, seems out of our personal control – especially when you are just standing there, naked, and completely vulnerable, and always afraid.  But anytime you get business, and I mean big business, (think about how many people are employed by the breast cancer industry…Susan B. Komen, fundraisers, radiologists, radiology techs, oncologists), at the very least you have a whole bunch of people depending on the perpetuity of this disease to continue their income and lifestyle.  To me, that’s scary.  And I can’t stand it.

But generally, I don’t want to say anything.  Because yes, it could happen to me…and then what?  And already it’s happened to millions of women, and I feel for them, deeply, so I don’t want to be raging about pink ribbons and walks and mammograms and what not, but still inside, I am whimpering….because…I am whimpering…because in my heart of hearts, something seems…wrong.

That said, this year, I planned to get my exam.  My insurance company had contacted me.  YOU NEED TO GET YOUR MAMMOGRAM.  The facility where I get my mammogram taken had contacted me.  YOU NEED TO GET YOUR MAMMOGRAM.  Yes, yes, I know.  So dutifully, I made my appointment and showed up on schedule.

And, for whatever reason, I wasn’t terrified or even thinking about it when I went in, stripped down, and let a rather nice lady squish my tits this way and that, hold my breath, hold my pose, do it again, this way, now this way, now suck it, hold it, hold it…got it.  So many pictures, so many angles.  I did feel a little bit of my soul stolen from me, and I think my shoulders were hunched just a tad more than usual upon exit, but for the most part, ten years into this now, the routine is pretty rote, and I just marched in, did it, and left.  And like a naïve fool, carried on with my day.

I think you know where this is headed.  Not the next day, but the one following, I got the call at 8am.  Some new something, a shadow, or honestly I can’t remember how they put it, showed up on one of the images of my right breast.

Well, I’m going to cut to the chase.  I’m fine.  And if anything, the two days of fear, mental struggle, isolation and existential pain that followed, just makes me feel sadder for women who don’t, in the end, get decent news and relief. 

But, that said, what followed sucked.

I returned to the clinic two days later.  More tit squishing.  So many more xrays.  “What the doctor saw is really far back,” says the radiology tech, who is basically squishing my lungs into the mammogram machine.  Sadness.  Sitting alone in a closet sized room, for an hour, naked, awaiting results, which no one seems hurried or even too concerned about delivering.  An ultrasound.  And then naked on a table by myself for 15 minutes, and then another ultrasound by, finally, a doctor, who then slowly concludes (this, after two hours of nudity, waiting, and trembling) and mind you it’s the first thing anyone has said to me about anything, “Well we see no signs of the shadow we saw on your first exam.  We just wanted to make sure.  But it looks like you are OK.”

Of course, by this time, I am a completely changed person.  I am ragged and delirious and all I can think is I want to hug this doctor. 

But the doctor does not leave it with a simple stamp of clean health.  He sits down before I leave and gets serious.  He says, “I know there is some controversy regarding mammograms.”  At this point, his face is really close to mine and he is looking me square in the eye.  And mind you, this man does not know me, nor does he have any idea about my subversive/conspiracy theory tendencies, but apparently I am not the only person who is confused and concerned regarding mammograms and breast cancer prevention.  “But,” he continues, “talk to any radiologist, anyone who does this for a living, for a life, and there is no controversy.  None.  It saves lives.”  And I tell you the two techs in the room with him, chime in like in a chorus behind him.  “No controversy!” they sing.  “You need,” he says, “to get a mammogram every year, every year, no exception!”  And then he just stares at me for impact, and I stare back and say, “yes, sir, I understand.”

Then crumpled, crippled, confused and elated I redress, gather my things and leave, thinking, if skipping a year of mammograms, means having to go through that, I will never skip my mammogram again…

It’s about eight minutes into my drive home, before I think, but wait…

(I wish great good health to all women and all people on this planet…all I’m saying is...?)