Marek and I are both Polish. He’s the same age as my son and very similar in heart and spirit, if not style. We’ve talked on the phone a couple of times. In a real way, I feel that we are family.
Marek and I were both in the hospital yesterday. They knew what my problem was and fixed it. I’m home now. That’s not the case with Marek, and his friend Ann has posted about it all with great love and concern.
Marek is one of those idealistic, creative, energetic young men who feel deeply and speak with passion and honesty. He has always had my deepest respect. Now he has my deepest concern. Especially since they haven’t figure out what’s wrong yet.
I sent Ann an email, offering to do a healing ritual for Marek and conjure up a metaphorical object to make him feel better. Jeneane is posting requests for ideas on how to keep in touch with Marek and keep a stream of good wishes flowing. They’re starting to flow.
Doc Searls has reminded us about Marek’s love-filled yet tumultuous life. Euan has added his feelings. Join in. Blog for Marek.
We love you Marek. Our hearts are with you.

Home. Still groggy. Splint up nose but no packing. Hardly any pain. You all must have been sending good thoughts like crazy!! Going to sleep now. Thank you, thank you!

If you’ve been following all of the conversations about anger (I’ve lost track of where they all are taking place), be sure to check in and read what’s been going on at Blog Sisters over the past few days. Great insights from some of your younger Sistahbloggers about why that anger is there for them. And don’t miss Deborah Gussman’s rant on her own blog that relates to all of that. Guys, you can’t post, but you can read and link. And you really should.

Tomorrow I will be given a general anesthetic for my sinus surgery. I am remembering the first time I had a general anesthetic. It was when I was in labor with my daughter. I was young and totally clueless and in excruciating pain. She was born ass-first, but the idiots in the hospital never figured out that my yelling and complaining were really warranted until more than a dozen hours into it. Somewhere along the line they finally knocked me out, during which time my little girl finally managed to emerge.
The next thing I remember was hearing a loud buzzing sound and seeing a white light at the end of a long tunnel. Having majored in English in college, of course the first thing I thought of was Emily Dickenson’s poem that begins, I heard a bly buzz when I died. I was convinced that I was dead. My only thought was that I would never see my baby; I’d never even know if it was a boy or girl. I didn’t feel afraid or concerned — only a sense of terrible loss. Of course, as I slowly came out of the anesthetic, I realized that the buzz was the sound of the hospital staff’s voices and the the white light was the light on the ceiling. Nevertheless, ever since then I haven’t been afraid of dying. What I am afraid of, though, is unalleviated PAIN!
They tell me that I will have to live on ice pops, jello, and ginger ale for several days after the surgery. (Only cold stuff; no dairy.) And my nose will be sore and swollen and filled with packing and a splint, and I’ll have to breathe through my mouth. So, today I’m eating all the stuff I won’t be able to eat for a week — fresh strawberries and cream, a salami sandwich with basil and tomato on a hard roll, cheese cake…. And I’m going to sit outside in the sun and read while I still look presentable to the world. I’m stocked up on movies I taped off the tv, books, Fimo to work on a jewelry design I have in my head, and every kind of cold stuff I can imagine, including lots of watermelon.
So, remember to send me your good thoughts tomorrow.
And while I take tomorrow off from blogging, make sure you go and read Frank Paynter’s interview with Dorothea Salo. She’s half my age and twice as smart. I wonder if I had been born thirty years later than I was, if I might have been at least a little like she is. I like to think so.

The One True b!X – 09 July 2002 – The Return
Now, where are all the other Phil Donahues of this world? He’s the only reason I envy Marlo Thomas these days. I can’t wait for his new program to begin on July 15 at 8 p.m. on MSNBC.

The One True b!X – 08 July 2002 – Doing The “Smirk And Shuffle”
Two purposes to this post: to see if I finally remembered how to do the Trackback and to point you to another great post by b!X, which ends with:
I wonder just how many people in America are aware of how much of the rest of the world laughs at us, shakes its head at us, because this is who we have running the country. Have we no sense of shame at all? Are we really more satisfied with an idiot than we were with a philanderer? Are we really more satisfied with someone whose “malfeance” has to do with his performance in office, rather than his performance in the sack?
Are we really, after all, exactly that stupid?

Last week, I went to a picnic at the local home of a young woman artist with whom I worked very closely for several years in the field of interdisciplinary education. My friend is a funky visual artist with an incredible aptitude for technology, and so she took a job doing both at a small college in New Hampshire. Her real home with her really cool boyfriend is not too far from where I am, however, and she does go back and forth a lot. We never seem to find the time to hook up, so I was glad to have this chance over the holiday. While she focuses mostly on painting (now she’s experimenting with painting on digital images) the piece she did that I like best is a little white table on which she glued white plaster casts of her nipples. Heh.
Over the weekend I went to a family picnic at the lakeside home of one of my cousins — about a half-hour from where I am. He’s the only cousin of mine with whom I’ve ever felt enough in common to consider a friend. I don’t see too much of him and his live-in lady during the rest of the year, but I love going out there in the summer. He had also invited some other relatives — all Polish born and still bilingual. I grew up being able to speak Polish, and I get a kick out of realizing that I can still follow conversations in that language even though I can’t remember enough of the vocabulary to speak it. Except for my cousin and his girlfriend, I felt as unconnected to these relatives as if they were just passing acquaintances. And it has nothing to do with the language. It has more to do with the way we view the world and our places in it.
It must be awfully nice to have your family members also be your friends. It must be.

Old friends, memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fears….
— Old Friends, Simon and Garfunkel
Over the course of a lifetime, you meet a few people who become your friends and stay your friends, even if you lose touch for a while. I don’t know what the variable is that keeps the connection open between some old friends but not between others.
Yesterday I had a visit from a former Significant Other. He lives in Pacific Northwest now, and we exchange emails every once in a while. He had come out to visit his family in various locales in the Northeast, and he had a few hours in between visits, so he stopped by. We had had a few good years together, years ago, — dancing, vacationing, just hanging out, arguing politics (both government and gender). One summer we rented a houseboat and cruised around the St. Lawrence Seaway for a couple of weeks. I remember that he invented coffee bags long before anyone else had every heard of the things. He would empty out tea bags and fill them with ground coffee beans, and then he could just make himself a quick cup of regular whenever he wanted. (I neither drink nor make coffee). I guess our relationship just ran its course.
Before he moved across the country, and long after we had stopped being each other’s Significant, I ran into him at a ballroom dance and he told me that he was going out to Oregon to check out where he might want to live. When I mentioned that my son was living out there, he invited me to come along on the trip and pay a visit to theonetruebix and the cybercafe that he owned back then. My old friend and I had a relaxed, comfortable, and Platonic time visiting and sightseeing and even making it out to the Pacific Ocean for the first time in both our lives. My mother still says he was the nicest guy I dated since my divorce.

Last week, Tom Bolton rescued a bird in danger of being run over in traffic. He has since found out what he should do with the lost creature, and he’s done it.
According to this site,
Native and tribal peoples believe that all living things have lessons to teach us. By observing the characteristics and behaviors of our four legged and feathered relatives, we can become aware of these lessons. Many native peoples carry or wear carvings of animals or birds (fetishes) as a reminder of the wisdom, experience, understanding and medicine power of that animal or bird. These likenesses honor these teachers, as well as inspire us toward a clearer understanding of our own strengths and remind us of where we may need to concentrate more effort in our own lives.
Over the years, working with my shaman/medicine man/therapist, I accumulated several totem animals — two salmanders, a young fox, a bear, a tiny dragon the size of a dragonfly, and an osprey.
Last year, I had an encounter with a woodchuck. Really two woodchucks. I passed one dead by the side of the road, and, as I always do with roadkill, I sent a mental apology to the spirit of the creature, honoring its short life and hoping that its death was quick and painless. My thoughts stayed with the idea of woodchuck and what its spirit might teach me. And then, several yards in front of me, a very much alive woodchuck stops to watch me. Of course, I had to write a poem about this synchronicity.
A chubby woodchuck
in the middle of an empty parking lot
stops to watch me walk in circles
around a June afternoon
awash in dandelion seeds
and gently dappled sunlight.
He twitches his nose,
ambles a few more steps
sits on his haunches,
rests his paws on his full belly

I wonder how many of you remember that cute little blonde-mopped tyke who danced and sang her way through her childhood and was known for pursing up her cute little mouth and saying Oh my goodness! I know that Tom Shugart probably remembers, but I forgot to remember to mention that he’s the latest intervewee over at Frank Paynter’s, and, again, Paynter strips away some of the net anonymity and gives additional dimension to our already warm impression of this blogger friend.