THE GAMBLE on the poor man’s coronavirus test worked out. Two weeks after the cancer center knocked down my immune system, it’s pretty much confirmed that I hadn’t been exposed before treatment. I’d likely be haunting my urn by now if I had.
At this point my immunity’s either fully restored or it will be in the next seven days or so. I haven’t done final blood labs. Probably should be doing them.
So anyway, not dead yet! Told ya I’m a lucky buckaroo. Who else do you know who’s fallen dead asleep riding a motorcycle at 60 mph, woke up riding across a farmer’s field in Saskatchewan, somehow didn’t hit a truck, a pole, a tree, a fence…. If I believed in guardian angels I’d say angel? You mean just one? No, I must have more like a whole guardian angel board of directors. That or horseshoes up my ass, which is how my friend Bob phrased it when he heard about Saskatchewan.
I’m sticking with quantum entanglement, good old spooky action at a distance. Since there is no explanation mortally apprehendable as indubitably true, I don’t require much of one.
With amateurs taking the government for a joyride, it’s been heartwarming to see billionaires like Robert Kraft and Oprah pitching in on the pandemic relief, kindly donating a small share of the money they don’t pay in taxes. The right hand not only knows what the left hand is doing, it puts out a press release. Well done, oligarchs. A grateful nation salutes you on bended knee, and pledges to keep running our society for your personal benefit.
In a stunning lack of self awareness, the bride and I were thinking about decamping to one of our other houses for the duration. And the local help there, if they were to get the virus from us, it would probably be the most exciting thing that ever happened to them.
We thought about our place in the Hamptons but everybody’s out that way by now. Maybe the one in the Berkshires, but that can be a letdown if it’s not the right time of year for pretty leaves. South of France, eh, we just laid off our pilot and yacht captain, couldn’t see carrying them on our health insurance during the shutdown.
I suppose we might as well just sit tight here at the humble manse, ride it out like the salt of the earth we are.
All this fuss! If only the press had done its patriotic duty, stuck to the official talking points and pooh-poohed the bug making its way to these shores. Better yet, just should have kept things quiet.
Which puts me in mind of actor George Kennedy as Captain Ed Hocken, his lament in The Naked Gun, where he’s commiserating with his friend, Detective Frank Drebin, over unwanted publicity: “What is journalism coming to? You’re laying on top of the Queen with her legs wrapped around you and they call that news?”
How I’m whiling away the time…
Well, for one, I’m trying to resist opening this box.
It’s supposed to sit for a week in a cool place. It’s got chocolate bourbon balls from the recipe of the late Josephine Cappetta Golaszewski. Her son, Marc, whipped up this batch for me. He works for the Post Office, so he knows how to write a “fragile” notice that carriers recognize as coming from an insider.
The box arrived with literally not a mark on it. I mean, just perfect. It looks as if someone wrapped it in velvet and hand-carried it 300 miles to my door.
One of my happy memories of growing up in West Philly was being able to walk across the street and gorge on chocolate bourbon balls at 14. That was 7 years underage at the time.
Mrs. Golaszewski had the gift of hospitality. She enjoyed cooking, and baking. You’d be walking down 64th Street and hear her call to you from her front porch. Next thing you know you have a seat at the dining room table as if you’re family. Because you sort of were, and just for nothing.
Here at the humble manse we alerted recently to a frantic clawing sound in the pipe above the basement woodstove. I wasn’t about to take the pipe apart and turn a squirrel loose in the house, so I went up on the roof and lowered 35 feet of rope down the chimney. Well, the critter that climbed the rope and made a getaway was, to my surprise, not a rodent but a starling. For a bird it had made quite a furious racket in the stovepipe.
Until today, as you can see, there was nothing to stop the wildlife from falling down the chimney.
This morning, I went up there and cut a strip of galvanized hardware cloth, made the chimney cap critter-proof.
And dig it, now I’m that old man in the neighborhood who walks around on the roof in his slippers.
And white socks that won’t stay up… Geez… all downhill from here.
Eight days after the end of chemo round #6 of 6, I felt well enough to get outdoors again. I worked in the woods for two days. Felled trees, trimmed trees, bucked logs, cleared brush.
It set me back. On day 3 I slept for basically 24 hours.
Felled a 57-foot maple that was too close to the house. Got tired of climbing up on the roof to trim it back with a pole saw every year.
Bucked it into stovewood, in two sessions, on account of my diminished physical conditioning. Did manage to stack most of it in just one try.
It aggravated the crash hardware in my right leg. I’ll be doing the beat-up old biker limp for a week.
On indoor activities, I’ve resolved to watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy until I understand what’s going on.
Actually, no, I think I’ve given up, after three watches.
Unless Smiley’s the Soviet mole. In which case I do get it.
My friend John Ross signed me up for a subscription to the Criterion Channel. The first movie I watched was The Passenger, by Michelangelo Antonioni. I hadn’t seen it since 1975.
It stars the pre-full-of-himself Jack Nicholson, before he created an off-screen Hollywood persona and took up staying in character full time.
Antonioni’s a remarkable talent. He pans through time, pans to reveal sound sources—wonderful stuff! If you like that art-house sort of thing.
When I saw The Passenger 45 years ago, in college, there was no way to pause the movie for a careful look around. I always wondered what book it was that Nicholson’s character, David Locke, is reading while trying to get the scoop on a secret war in Africa. Now I see it’s The Soul of the Age, by the Afrikaner naturalist and poet Eugène Nielen Marais.
Well anyway, The Passenger was one of the many things that influenced me to go into journalism. Not because news gathering is glamorous—you quickly realize it’s nothing at all like that. I think I was more attracted to its pitfalls; the difficulty of learning how to do it well, especially under daily deadline pressure. People who loathe the free press for its imperfections, I’d love to throw them into the arena and see the mush they’d file.
What attracted me most was the state of mind one has to cultivate. It’s not unlike taking a page from Blake: learning to see through the eye, not with it. That’s hard to do. You can spend a lifetime learning it.
And you don’t need to be a reporter. Just as a thinking human being and a good citizen, one must strive to see through the surface chaos of daily events; to turn off the Stupid Tube and read widely—read reporters, not the commentariat, the pundits, the armchair quarterbacks…
… the know-it-alls who strike a pose, clasping their chins or their glasses so as to appear wise.
Now, more than ever, we have a duty to think independently, to put things together for ourselves, to follow stories and reserve judgment until we can see what is reasonably, objectively known.
Locke flubs it. He can’t see through the eye, he’s too stuck on seeing with it. Thus, he’s taken in and lost in what he sees, or thinks he does. He gives up on the truth, gets discouraged by obstacles and stops caring. He becomes a mere passenger in the world.
In the end, while fleeing across Spain, he checks into the Hotel de la Gloria. So you can say his meta-character doesn’t even manage to get his head around foreshadowing. As you’ve guessed from the venue’s name, he never checks out.
I’m not recommending the movie, by the way. Antonioni’s an acquired taste that most people might not care to acquire. I say only that some directors—the greatest directors—are not merely directors. Antonioni’s a philosopher. Terrence Malick’s a poet. Julie Taymor’s a painter. That’s the kind of director who makes movies that stick with me over the decades, and over generations.
Speaking of movies, and in closing: last week a fellow I know in New York is working construction at a building in the West Village. From up on the roof he snaps this pic of that Navy hospital ship steaming up the Hudson.
Low & behold, watching the ship from the penthouse balcony below, there’s Hugh Jackman.
Jaime, an outgoing sort with the gift of gab, engages the actor in conversation. It turns out he’s a regular joe, doesn’t put on Hollywood airs. Well hell, I said, I’ve written a role he could play in a heartbeat. Might this be my long-awaited do-over? The shot I never got with the Bobby Jones fiasco?
I said the next time you’re on that job site, Jamie, get a name and number for whoever reads scripts for Jackman. And not the 23-year-old D-girl at the front desk, whose job it is to tell people to get lost, and who won’t even be in the business herself two years from now.
Who knows? Maybe Jaime will find, on yet a second occasion, that Jackman really is approachable by a mere working man, and he’ll get me the inside track via the Big Info.
A shot in the dark, a leap without a net. Like the poor man’s coronavirus test, it’s what I do.
Tony DePaul, April 4, 2020, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Amazing, there are still people in New York… not what our local news says….
Then we heard they were all stopped at the Florida border and sent back up to the Carolinas.
Careful, they might be sneaking in the backdoor of Little Rhody.
God Bless you, You came from good strong stock. Stay tuff, you got this. Thoughts and Prayers for continued Good news.
You’re an inspiration, Tony. I hope Jamie gets that info for you. Enjoy the chocolate bourbon balls.
Damn dude. You’re a bad ass.
Sending the captain home was a bad idea. Methinks hanging out on the yacht, far away from anyone except the Navy hospital boat, beats going to the Hamptons or staying in the humble manse. Smartest and safest thing you could do.
Thanks for the update. Glad you have the strength to still cut down trees and make firewood…
2020 is not looking good out here in Calif. Wrecked the GTL Jan 10 (bruised ribs and totaled the bike) then crashed a Yamaha 90 (brake failure and injured the knee and ankle) then just went through a spell of something (three days of fever and aches) which I can not get tested as I am not in target audience. Seem to have recovered so not sure what to expect next.
Replaced the 2012 BMW K1600GTL with a 2013 BMW R1200GS. Waiting to get feedback from the Pinion.
Trust the last treatment will go well for you. All the best.
Roger
Ouch! Times 3. Do be careful, Roger, both bug-wise and on the tall GS.
Tony,
Great post, always look forward to your updates and sense of humor.
A postal warning note to treat a package carefully? Really? I always assumed they took notes like that as personal challenges. No offense to any postal workers reading this of course.
Rooftops are great – wonderful views, nice breezes, a sense of being somehow special. But slippers? Didn’t they come with a warning label, “Not for use on roofs”?
And how does one “see through the eye”? Is this some sort of zen stuff? Details, we need instructions.
Glad you’re doing okay.
Dennis
Excellent on all levels. Thanks Tony (and I second the comment above about the Alec Guinness Tinker)
I was going to join the Stay Off the Roof crowd. But then I’m also a proud member of the Stay Off the Iron Piggy organization, too. And only now realizing that the same force that gets you upon the roof in your GODDAMN slippers is what has pulled you through cancer, and other Perils of Pauline experiences, like being assigned to the “auto beat” at the Providence Journal. Just selfishly, whatever it takes to keep you writing.
That’s one hell of a pile of wood there Tony. You have the energy of 3 men, even it only comes in bursts. I always enjoy The Nickels. Stay safe, but still live large.
It’s better to be a bird than a turtle.
Stay well, my friend, and cheers,
Terry
That graf beginning with “With amateurs” just slays me.
As does that too fabulous picture of Josephine, and her entire name.
Get off the roof. If you fall to your death, what will we have to read?
My slippers look just like that, thanks to my D1. Not roof climbers though. WTF is wrong with you? I am still <60 by about a minute and a half, but preparing for that good life. The roof should be nice by mid-summer. You continue to amaze and surprise. The most profound life lesson for my S1D1, S1D2, D1D1, D1D2 and D2S1 is going to have to be: "learning to see through the eye, not with it". Unlike my usual, I don't even want a primary source. Your explanation was plenty (If your mother says she loves you…)! Still have a great bike with a dead battery from non-use…
Yes, Blake was on to something:
“This life’s dim windows of the soul/
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole/
And leads you to believe a lie/
When you see with, not through, the eye/”
Nowadays we’d probably call it mindfulness; the unfailing self-awareness required to prevent the seer from being absorbed into the seen.
When we arrive at a destination and don’t remember the last mile or two of getting there, that’s seeing with the eye.
Try the Alec Guinness version of Tinker Tailor. A riveting performance.
Still don’t know what’s going on, but won’t matter.
Nice slippers, Tony. And I mean that most sincerely. They look pretty new too. If it pleases you to walk around on the roof in your slippers, or ride your bike, or play lumberjack in the woods for two days straight, then do it. I find one of the advantages of being in my sixties is that I can do and say exactly what I please and other people will just shake their heads and mutter “silly old bugger.”
Agree with you on the “Tinker Tailor….” movie. It’s true to its source, the novel by John Le Carre who never explains what’s going on either. Not in any of his spy novels. You, the reader, are an observer of a succession of incidents and it’s up to you to figure out what it all means. Quite endearing really.
Glad you are still here and thanks for the regular updates on your life.
Good on you Tony, love the update, sense of humor! Once we are done with the stay at home advisory, we can meet at the middle of nowhere Diner! Putting carbs back on R100/7 tomorrow! I will take a ride for you!
Cheers, Tony! Glad you are doing well.
Look forward to chewing the fat with you sometime in the future.
-Bullet
Great to hear from you, just getting ready to E-mail to see what’s
happening. Hope you are keeping up on Mr. Daub’s build.
Groovy. That’s it.
You are still climbing on top of the roof to fix the stove pipe?? You go out and cut down trees and stack wood?? All the people in your house can’t keep you in? While most of us (me) are moving very slowly through life right now, since this is only day 4 of a 30 day month… So I make sure not to accomplish too much on any given day, like taking it all in slow motion.
Great job tony
😄
Next time I see Logan
I’ll get the info for ya …………👍🏻
Psyched that you are virus-free! Hell yeah. Also, Sebastian and I were thinking about watching that soldier/sailor/spy movie. Based on your description, I will be back-burnering it and focusing instead on some low-brain-cell garbage from The CW, haha.
Wow. Never an idle moment, eh? Well happy you logged in 24 hours of collapse time.
Be well, Tony. Hi to Pam.
Cheers, Alix
Hi Tony. I’m glad things are going positive and forward. Try to stay safe and healthy. Hope to see you soon. Your friend Mike…
You boss
🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🥂
Great hear from you, Tony. Stay as safely as you can.
Glad to hear that you’re doing better, your writing is even more upbeat. Stay safe.
I’m a huge fan of Antonioni and “The Passenger “. The opening scene, when one of Locke’s interviews turns the camera on him has stayed with me for a long time.
I’m guessing we saw the film around the same impressionable age.
I recently discovered my library has 400 Criterion films; I finally got to see “La Adventura”. Antonioni rewards listening carefully to the dialogue.
Once the library reopens, I’m going to borrow “Red Desert”.
Re movies about journalists, did you ever see “Medium Cool”?
Never did see Medium Cool. Right now I’m watching Wim Wenders’ Until The End of the World. It’s so bad it’s good. Almost five hours long and big on ennui.