the other side

i had surgery on my knee nearly two days ago. and i will tell you that it was weird for me. i went in at five a.m. and stripped to my skivvies, put on a gown and footies, then let a woman shave my leg and another stick a tube in my hand. i was rolled into the o.r., quickly went to sleep and woke up in a recovery room one and a half hours later. that was it.

another woman woke me up, dosed me with heavy drugs and let my friends get me ready to leave, teasing me all the while. my friends giggled at my loopiness while helping me out of the hospital, and then my mom showed up to take me home.

home. i'm lying on a futon in the middle of my parents' living room floor, very sore leg elevated on pillows, icing it (twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off), and popping pain pills every "four to six hours," watching cable and trying not to go stir crazy.

and the funniest thing in all of this... the weirdest thing is... i think i'm ready to fall in love again. now who will be the lucky lady?

requiem: on the loss of a friend

where words cannot wriggle
pain and sense-memories dwell
i know forehead pushes
i see whites of eyes
once-loving-happy-hateful
pleading
and turn away

okay, how's this for some life...

for a good long while, i haven't been into the whole personal life confession, 'here's what's happening in my life', kind of blog, neither as a reader nor an author. sure, i'll write some thoughts about one thing i've been munching on or another or share a poem i've recently scribbled, but i haven't really gone into great detail about the ins and outs of my life for months and months. but i'm going to indulge myself and any possible interested readers (however unlikely that may be) with a little life.

since my last entry, i have been promoted at work - now a full-time retail employee (i know it's not writing full-time, but maybe i should do more regular part-time writing before i expect to just jump into selling my first novel.) - and gotten health insurance, as a result. and only one week later, before i could even fill out the paperwork for my benefits (including the health insurance), i injured my knee playing frisbee with friends.

(i know, just when i get insurance, suddenly i need it. the ohenry-esque irony of the situation has not escaped me.)

i'm told - after multiple visits to the hospital and doctors' offices, x-rays, ct-scan, and yesterday an mri, not to mention a reinjury to the knee walking down stairs a week ago - that i have a sample platter of possible injuries to the knee. in the words of my second doctor today, i have 'a little of everything': a torn acl, tears to both menisci, what looks like a slight fracture to my tibia and strains and sprains to the other ligaments and tendons running through the knee. about the only things i don't have are a dislocation of my patella and a severed tendon or ligament. yeah.

and before i could ask my doc, 'so will i ever play in the pros again?', he told me that indications from my injuries pointed to necessary reconstructive arthroscopic knee surgery, sooner than later. yeah... serious, full-on, knock-me-out-go-night-night, 'i'm not shitting you' surgery.

in three weeks, i will go under the knife for the first time i can remember, and i confess (here's some life for you) that i am scared. i have a sucky choice to make between an epidural and sedation or total anaesthesia, and then i will have four to six weeks of rehabilitation and physical therapy to look forward to.

i might just be up and limping around in time for the holiday rush at the store. yippee.

jingle-yippee.

"patti smith: dream of life" by steven sebring, 2008: grade a-/b+

i have been waiting for this documentary film about patti smith in her own words to be made for a very long time, and i am not alone. many people besides me, including it seems the amazing ms. smith herself, had been anticipating its completion and release, as steven sebring, the director, spent more than ten years filming it. and i wish that i could say it was everything i had hoped it would be.

i have said in poetry, and repeated it in idle conversation, that i would like to meet and love a woman with guts like patti smith. she is one of my greatest inspirations. she has known incredible loss and difficulty, and yet still manages to not only continue on, but thrive and siphon every drop of feeling out of life and devour it. she delights in the people she loves, and she loves a great many.

her words and voice are at the same time course and pure, unvarnished and raw for their time in the soil of her great heart. and that voice and those words have cut my own heart, even as they have chafed and scratched at my soul. my blood has flowed with hers as i have heard her scream her grief and outrage at funerals and wars. but something innocent in her has never been lost, and it finds my own and coaxes it out of hiding to dance barefoot and lift its face to the warm sun.

as i said above, i have looked forward to the opportunity to glimpse into the life of patti smith and to hear her voice tell me about her pains and joys. and "patti smith: dream of life" could not have failed in that pursuit, given its scope and undoubtedly all but limitless footage after ten years of shooting. however, it did seem to lose its focus and even falter in fulfilling the very promise made in the title - to express what her "dream of life" might be.

the lyrics of that title track, "dream of life" are mournful, yes, but also take ownership and possession of the passion and soul of the one who is lost; the singer has dressed herself in the love of the loved one as she remembers him. and this documentary film well-documents patti smith's ability and will to plumb the oceans of love for her friends and family, even in their absence. but it takes a bitter turn in the end, leaving us alone with patti in what seems more like haunting than inheritance of the presence of her love.

now perhaps mr. sebring, with the benefit of ten years of footage and intimate knowledge of her life, intended to show us in the last moments of the film the true depths of grief and mourning patti smith is capable of feeling, but i think anyone who knows her story and her words knows how deeply she feels. and i may be a pollyanna for desiring to see it, but the patti that i know from her words and from her voice that has cut me, who grieves and loves, is a fighter and a lover, and i would have preferred that be the film's last word.