I will get going today but it's a useful exhaust right now to write here now. we've watched a lot of television with Erin in hospital. Erin hasn't felt up to doing much else. watched some of The Last Samurai. only the last third, and with plenty of expert interruptions. set in 19th century Japan, with a collision of old and new world. Tom Cruise as an American who hooks up with Samurai. there's probably plenty of hokum involved in the movie, like when the woman (geisha?) undresses Tom and the camera lovingly glazes his shiny perfect skin, but samurai culture as presented seemed interesting. and the hyperkinetic fights. how is it that swords slicing human flesh is kinda sexy, empowering, lovely? cuz that's the impression one gets, the gamer thrill. remember Obi Wan intoning the elegance of laser swords. now I do understand that guns were available in Japan in say the 17th century, yet warriors tended toward formalized one on one encounters rather than the wholesale virtues of gunplay. anyway, the final battle, swords versus guns, was straight out of Braveheart, with a side trip to Charge of the Light Brigade. I'm willing to watch the whole movie, despite Tom Cruise's presence. Batman and Robin was pretty ridiculous. gthe Tim Burton Batmans (ugh, Batmen) live well with Burton's quirky obsessiveness, but the franchise looks dead now. the complete flouting of physics bothers me, tho I suppose it shouldn't. the excitement, say, of yoiur hero falling from a building is the scrambling intensity of saving said ass. if the falling takes ten minutes and you're equipped qwith tons of gadgets that can do anything, the tension diminishes. Arnold looked silly in his get up, and plodded thru his role. why's he driving an overchromed Studebacker? and his freeze gun is exactly like those steroid squirt guns boys at swimming pools covet and use. it all looked so chintzy, more like the tv show, but without tongue in cheek. Uma Thurman got to ham up her siren role but again it was like the tv show. so the tally is, 2 dedicated scientists mutated into egocentric villains. George Clooney as BW beamed his winning half smile with samurai grace. there were a handful of shots where he had no lines, but the camera had to catch his sexy twinkle. not saying I don't envy the twinkle. I know the costumes have been discussed in the literate world of pop consideration. the molded abs and bums sticking out is a wee bit weird. is it puritanical for Batgirl's molded breasts to have a molded bustier? I, personally, think so. covering up the covering up, yet at the same time highlighting. the 3rd Austin Powers had its moments, tho they tended to stretch on. some nice set pieces with a lot of dull filler. I really disliked Fat Bastard, a pointless, unfunny character. we saw a game show in which a cab driver picks up riders, who answer questions while they negotiate Manhattan traffic. another show purports to make your home safer. well, it is like this: a household is set up with cameras, then a B&E expert breaks in. the deal being that the victims will get the latest security gimcrack for submitting to this crud wink. the thief breaks, literally, in and scours the house destructively. obviously the show pays for breakage, but the thief showed no regard for, say, a sentimentally prized coffee mug or such like. and what about the paintings that were taken. reality takes prisoners. today Erin and I watched Shanghai Nights with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson. Chan's choreographed fights are fun to watch, and he's a good straight man. I happen to like Owen Wilson. I kinda like any actor who don't give a shit. also, yesterday, saw some of I can't think of the name of it, but Chris Tucker replaced Owen Wilson, anotehr good pairing. finally there was a hour or so of college basketball. Erin and I were reading while we watched, and we took a walk during. basketball looks like such a tepid thrill now. I guess I'm no longer amazed that someone six foot a lot can manage to stuff a basketball into a basket. oh, we also watched a team trick shot billiards competition between US and Europe. the announcer says one guy is known as Maestro and another is The Wizard. the aesthetic is so foreign to me. you know how you mind gets twisted when you think of the Michael Jordan of shuffleboard or whatever. there's no reason why basketball would be more unimportant than shuffleboard or billiards trick shot competitions. it's just foreign. I recently read an account of a cricket match. the terminology was completely recondite for me, even tho it seemed so populace inspired. I almost feel I am not watching enough tv, because the culture is percolating but I'm not witnessing.

the redoubtable Tim Peterson tagged me with a meme... hmm...redoubtable means able to doubt twice... two doubts = a confirm: all righty then. a meme is the viral spread of cultural info. I was late getting onto meme as a currency but anyway, Tim presented me and four others a chance to unwind on the question of 5 little known facts about me. this blog to the contrary, all facts about me are little known. I can say that I have a strange bump on my left little finger that I presume few know about. I snagged the finger on a nail when I was a toddler, and it healed oddly. it doesn't hurt or make itself known to me much. I don't imagine a lot of people look at someone wondering if there's a bump on the finger. what are 4 other things to say? I have written on this blog and on Antic View that I don't like poetry, but neither blog is much read so I can offer that as another little known. in saying that I don't like poetry I mean perhaps that I don't like the memes of poetry. when I became interested in writing, I guess I had this ball of light idea in mind that differed from the laboured, recondite things I was told was poetry. I've learned to like and even love some of those laboured, recondite things, but I am most interested in a writing that surprises me. which is why I see a closeness between poetry and humour. okay, that's 2 down. the 3rd baseman's chasing me towards the catcher so I'll just rattle off 3 others: I paint, I think I have Asperger's, and I cry easily. and I love Beth and Erin. I shan't tag, the net has already been thrown.

if language could include... anyway, Erin's still in hospital, where no one should be. the hospital experience... kinda love nurses, kinda hate doctors. well, I'll try to be narrative here. nasty disease situations are abroad at this time, Rhode Island closed their schools today because of flu, pneumonia, meningitus confluing (from confluence, right?). so Erin just managed to collect the going term of dismay. and the doctors apparently aren't quite sure what they're up against, proceeding in the throw it in the moat and see if anyone salutes mode of scientific inquiry. Erin's fever finally diminished to near normalcy friday morn, then a shift in antibiotics (for fear of its the damaging effects of one of the antibiotics). then the doctor (that is to say a doctor) thunk Erin should have fluid removed from his lungs. they do during ultra sound. Erin was not allowed to eat or drink, I think for fear he'd vomit inconveniently during the procedure. for some reason, he wasn't on iv. upshot: 6 hours without fluids, and his fever spiked. the procedure consisted in a needle in his back, but only for a sample. we got differing explanations. someone said they may drain the fluid but the doctor doing the procedure said they never do that. which is part of the hospital experience, along with the golden one: hurry up and wait. okay, I'm trying to stay with upshot. the hierarchy of hospitals is so malevolent. doctors are untouchable. their contact with the patient is brief. you realize that their work is a performance. each has a style by which they communicate to you as patient or concerned person. job one for doctor is ascertaining needs and invoking cures. secondary is the matter of explaining, whether it's harrumph harrumph impressive med school or look you in the eye. nurses do a great deal of sensitive stuff, making judgment calls concerning the patient's needs and care. they also empty bedpans. it's a weirdly large spectrum. Erin finally had the procedure, which freed him to eat and drink. his appetite is back, which is a pissa sign. the procedure was investigative. it would reveal whether or not the congestion in Erin's lungs was pustular, which, if it were, would require surgery. Beth had asked to speak with a doctor at noon, and by 8 still had heard nothing. requests had been made to get a doctor to tell us what up. another upshot: an on call doctor claimed to have checked Erin out while Erin was being transported from the procedure. Beth was with Erin the entire time. that doctor lied. all we wanted was information. after a procedure, an explorative one, answers are expected. Erin's temperature has been above 100, much of the time several degrees above, for a week. we want to know what's going on. okay, I've gone into blah blah mode. Beth's sleeping at the hospital tonight. I stay with the dog and cat. Beth just called, this minute, to say Erin's temperature was now 98.6. I could only cry. Erin's been a wonderful patient, enduring. all this hierarchal bull crap interfering in our lives. the Olympian doctors bespeak their truths, yatta yatta. yesterday (I think) Erin had a student nurse. this guy will be a great nurse. he was exquisitely sensitive. he was Portuguese, a little hard for me to understand. I mean, I had to have him repeat what he said at times. he was in oh I see mode as far as procedures but worked with what I have to call a tenderness. the doctors have a barrier against the emotional concerned people, whereas the nurses don't. the doctors don't give shit about the financial burden of illness. cripes this isn't music, I admit it. whingeing, sure. but, hello, you bring your child, or anyone, to a hospital, you are concerned. I understand an emotional distance allows doctors to do their job, but they have to have a sense of the patient and the people around the patient, what they fear, what they need. the lying doctor amazed me. the nurse who accompanied Beth up from the procedure (I was doing a yeoman job calling in a meal for Erin, who proved a right trencherman, as closing time for the kitchen neared) must've brought the issue to her superiour, because when a respiratory doctor arrived to speak with us, she was joined by head of nurses. this doctor answered all our questions, which is all we wanted. when Erin broke his femur, the surgeon who did the procedure (who I think is now head of pediatric surgery at Children's) was readily available. kinda scary, actually, because we saw him at all hours. so I hope Erin and Beth have slept well. dog and cat here gave me an extra hour before intimating their own needs. I should wonder about the nature of what I've just written here, but thats a study for anon. the record, that is, will have to stand as is.

let's put it this way: Erin decided to have pneumonia. typical teenager. I hope it isn't careerist to mention this, because I hate careerism. careerism is when you talk about what you're doing. ugh. Erin's mighty fever has refused to depart, plus that wracking cough, and, ugh again, today, he just happened to mench a shortness of breath. we went to the doctor, who ordered an x-ray taken. which required a goodly hour or more waiting for the chance. and it would take more than that before the xray could be read, so we were told to go home. where the call came thru, as dinner inched toward serving, that Erin must be admitted to the hospital (by admitted I mean submitted to). the doctor greased it so that Erin could go directly to his room. but that didn't mean that the iv for fluids and antibiotics wouldn't be started till 3 hours later. the phenomenon of hospital time is very disconcerting. the staff was attentive, I don't wish to demean. you just wonder where does time go when it gets to the hospital. 6 years ago we had a 9 day stay at Children's Hospital when Erin's femur broke (I slept on the floor, couches, even a gurney). jeez, the nurses were wonderful, the surgeons were wonderful. okay, the on call doctor wanted Erin out toute de suite. Erin had external pins in his thigh to hold the bones together. one got infected in the hospital and had to be replaced. afterwards, the on call doctor removed the packing from the infected wound. he said to Erin, this is going to feel funny. odd definition of funny. he proceeded to pull a yard or 2 of packing from Erin's leg, with Erin screaming and Beth and I holding him as best we could. holy shit. I presume Erin rests well now, he acquiesced to lights out when we left. I guess I don't care what the phony poets are doing, Jim. I don't care about which poetry careerists need spanking. one has to make an effort to care about that stuff, whereas Erin's illness is part of life, part of my life. the only cure for bad poetry in the world is good poetry, humph, not radial yakking. the poetry of waiting at the doctor's is just a different animal. one, I daresay, that really breathes. the issue of poetry power couples is corny, obviously. that I got to spend 6 hours in a hospital today isn't a valid measure of anything but patience. that I felt the need to stay up later than I had ought, to quickly transcribe the conditions in my head as I return from that hospital is interesting, perhaps you could try to figure why.

I can't switch to Beta Blogger, tho I guess I want to, which means that I officially have done a fair amount of blogging. I don't like the verb blog, because it suggests a usage that is not necessarily so. I mean, a blog is a means of transmission. if one's work appears in a magazine, is one magazining? well yeah, but what's the dillio? I cede to the idea of a community of bloggers, but I signed nothing with blood, and I doubt others have either. so no need for hyperactivation on that point. I think of Tributary as a poetry blog, but how do I fit shopping tours and journalistic dailiness into that idea? super easy is how. you know the back cover of Lunch Poems from City Lights. evoking a picture of O'Hara bopping around and, you know, limning lines on handy Olivettis. poetry can be much of goings on, inside and out. it's a cheesy view to see them strictly as rampant careerism. that works into a definition of careerism as any effort whatsoever to broadcast one's work and one's thinking. that's up there with Kerouac's self-ultimate, and wasn't he a kid at the time? I like to sit at the computer when I can and language what's recent, what's around, what's tipping the current scale somehow. I specifically treat myself to slang, or the adventurously non-standard, or any other way to surprise myself, and possibly the Reader. that's an exercise, exercise is good. I look forward to new entries at all the blogs to the right, and others as well. I got on the Poetics list 7 years ago, when I pretty much rebegan writing poetry. having isolated myself from what will have to be called the poetry community (but not from the writing itself), I found the Poetics list inspiring for having others yapping in a daily way about poetry. the list got over-managed to the point that it has little apparent life. plus people never seemed to catch on to how awkward to the point of stupid the group soliloqiues of internet "discussion" can be. a very weakness of blogs is just that yelling over the transom at the blog next door that goes on. what's interesting is the personal ruminations in patches of one's own idiom. the conscious and unconscious effort to create a vital language space.

2007. hail the new year lads and lasses. Beth and I celebrated our lst New Year's Eve together on the 10th floor of Boston Children's Hospital, when Erin broke his leg. we could espy Boston's welcoming fireworks display out the window. this year we planned to old fart it by watching the marathon of Everest episodes on Discovery Channel, 6 hours worth. then a party invitation came. then, friday night, Erin wasn't just sick, he was torching at 105 degree fever. it will be said that Erin is prone to sockdolager fevers. they also tend to hang on. we were unsure if we could leave him. we left the decision to the last moment. so we did see a few episodes of Everest. Erin had seen some the first time they were aired and tho he liked them, he wanted to watch something else. so he started telling us to go. and his fever had ameliorated some, so we did. and of course we stayed longer than we planned, till after midnight, then hurried back. Erin's temperature during the night hit 103, so the battle continues to rage. when I was young I had a sterling fever. I was laid up watching the movie Moby Dick. it's not a great representation of the book but it works as an adventure, even to the degree that I think Gregory Peck comes off fairly well as Ahab. anyway, my fever broke during the climactic whale hunt scenes, which are pretty exciting. I managed to sleep till 6:30. by habit, no matter when I go to bed, I tend to wake the same time. so here's the, like, new year and all.