Archive for the ‘Language and medicine’ Category

like a racehorse

August 2, 2026

(talk on bodily functions and the vocabulary for them, sometimes in street language, so not to everyone’s taste; also more than you might want to hear about Arnold’s Wonderful Whizz World)

About my current medical regimen, which involves significantly large doses of the steroid prednisone, intended to treat serious kidney problems (resulting in fluid accumulations in several parts of my body, quite visibly in my feet and legs) while staying under the dosage that, historically, makes me (to put this in the plainest terms) crazy. It’s a balancing act.

Yesterday, when I was overloaded with household revisions (including a new computer and printer) and had little time to sip my green tea pleasantly, the tide turned: I began, as we say, pissing like a racehorse, really quite remarkable amounts (also, I have to say, enormously pleasurable).  For years now, I’ve lived with urinals scattered everywhere, so I can take quick whizzes without disrupting whatever I’m working on (if I’m laser-focused on what I’m doing, I can go for an hour without a whizz, but that’s pretty much my limit).

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turning point 2

July 30, 2026

A follow up to today’s earlier posting “turning point”; again, a lightly edited version of e-mail to family and caregivers.


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turning point

July 30, 2026

It’s 7/30, penultimate July, tigers about to exit; this is a lightly edited version of e-mail under header turning point, sent this morning to family and caregivers.


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Small worlds

July 23, 2026

In recent news: the publication (on 7/6) of John D’Emilio’s latest book, Making Gay History: Memoir of a Scholar-Activist (Duke University Press). From Jonathan Ned Katz’s blurb:

a report from the trenches, a history of the struggle to create a history of sexuality, a personal history of political activism, the story of a [AZ: devoutly Catholic] smart boy from the Bronx who made himself into a pioneering, left, feminist, anti-racist gay, public intellectual.

Which prompts me to tell an anecdote about my man Jacques and me — and John D’Emilio. So my tale will of course begin with Larry Kramer, the author of the controversial novel Faggots, but more important to my tale, the founder of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, which means that through his ceaseless abrasive hectoring, he changed the world for the better and helped to save untold numbers of lives.

(There are brief accounts of Kramer and D’Emilio in my 7/21 posting “Two celebrated gays”)

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Notes: vertigo

July 13, 2026

In the face of impossibly large numbers of things to post about, rising by the minute, I will just pick little bits of stuff, so I will at least be telling you something.

Now, about where I live now, on the third (top) floor of the Avant independent living community. On the side of #3003 facing the street (El Camino Real, a major city street — also California highway 82 — and the smaller El Camino Way running parallel to it) there’s the living room (a big space in the middle now housing my worktable, huge desk, and accompanying office furniture and equipment) and on either side of it, two bedrooms: on the left, what I’m using as my actual bedroom; on the right, what is now serving as a little living room (currently with my recliner chair, a coffee table, and three ordinary chairs for visitors — very much a work in progress).

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, the street wall in the middle room is one gigantic window, left to right, floor to ceiling, which I keep entirely open to the light (beside the street view, it has the foothills in the background, and My Tree right outside the window) because it’s more or less endlessly pleasurable.

Except when I get up to get something from, or off, the street end of the big desk and inadvertently look down at the tree and the ground below it. And am seized with churning vertigo and the certainty that I am about to crash through the window and fall three stories to my death. Oh jesus fucking christ!

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Two laughs-out-loud and a shiver of self-recognition

June 13, 2026

Cartoons that especially moved me in the latest — 6/1/26 — issue of the New Yorker: two by artists who are old acquaintances on this blog (Drew Dernavich and Frank Cotham), trafficking here in their brands of absurdity (their gags made me laugh out loud); plus one by British cartoonist, illustrator, and writer Sara Akinterinwa (whose work, all recent, explores dating, relationships, identity, politics, and navigating adult life as a young woman of color) that gave me not a great laugh but a shiver of self-recognition: that’s not funny, that’s my life strategy!

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How’m I doin’? 2

May 5, 2026

Yesterday’s installment was on blood pressure (fabulous again today) and potassium level (requiring blood tests, so who knows?). Today, it’s flaking skin and diarrhea. The first is something of a mystery; the second turns out to be another tricky exercise in getting medication at just the right level.

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How’m I doin’?

May 4, 2026

A calendrical reminder, from my 5/4/24 posting on this blog:

today is (at least) three holidays, one deadly serious, two entertaining. … Four Dead in Ohio Day (remembering the 1970 Kent State shootings), Star Wars Day [May the Force be with you], and (in the US, where May 4th is 5/4) Dave Brubeck Day (for the 5/4 time signature in music [celebrated in Brubeck’s album Take Five])

Whassup? Every so often, a friend who, inexplicably, has not been following my postings attentively on a daily basis decides to catch up on things by e-mailing me to ask how I am, how I’ve been doing, what’s up with me, am I ok, or something else along these lines. Most recently, How are you? from a friend on 4/23; I told them more than they probably wanted to know, when something terse in between Not dead yet and Fabulous would have been enough.

If they wrote today, I’d be ready with a reply: fabulous. Well, as fabulous as it gets for a seriously disabled 85-year-old with (among other things) advanced kidney disease. This morning’s I’m still kickin’ e-mail to my daughter (somewhat edited and expanded):

Slept 6 pm to 4:12 am — 10 hours beginning to end, but only 8 hrs. of actual sleep, because of a long break for half-dozing sexual fantasies that crowded my mind and hi-jacked my body, culminating in a fabulous cataclysmic orgasm (a sign of robust general health). And then my first morning vitals (at 5:17 am) had blood pressure in my target zone (123/73) and pulse (at 64) as well.

Figuratively, I danced my happy happy joy joy dance. In actuality I methodically exchanged my soggy underwear for fresh, a morning ritual I’ve performed for 75 years now. But even the messiness of real life can be a delight. I’ve been given, all my life, to nearly dying from one thing or another, so it was inconceivable that I would live to old age; but here I am, with many of my gifts and pleasures either intact or transformed into others that are also valuable or satisfying. That’s just wonderful.

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Triplefruit trail mix, the musical score

April 13, 2026

A couple days ago, with my helper Isaac, I was preparing triplefruit trail mix: a large pouch of commercial trail mix — of almonds, cashews, and (dried) cranberries — with added packs of (dried) blueberries and cherries. (A couple handfuls of this trail mix is then added to some granola — rolled oats with almonds, raisins, cranberries, and pecans — to make a bowl of my breakfast cereal, which is, finally, moistened with yogurt and milk. Fiber, fruits, nuts, probiotics, and yumminess.

Assembling the trail mix involves dumping the pouch of commercial mix and the packets of dried fruits into a large plastic container, fixing the top firmly on the container, and then getting its contents thoroughly mixed, by turning and shaking the container briskly, over and over.

Trail mixing is noisy, energetic, and surprisingly entertaining. You are moved to treat the stuff in its container as a percussion instrument, to sway your hips a bit, and to contemplate breaking into song. This time, Isaac and I had the very same inspiration:

Shake it up, baby … Twist and shout … Come on and work it on out

Oh yeah! There’s a musical score for trail mixing, and it’s glorious.

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Night life

March 6, 2026

About the night of  3/4-5, last night, different from all other nights in my experience, in its schedule and in the content of my dreams, suggesting that I spent the night in the grip of feel-good hormones rather than stress hormones. And awoke in calm delight.

First, some background, about earlier nights. Then about the schedule of last night’s sleep; about the content of last night’s dreams; and an appended note about feel-good hormones and stress hormones.

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