I dreamed I had ovarian cancer

I had a strange dream last night and am trying to piece it together before it recedes back into the vapour of subconscious oblivion. 

I was in some sort of medical clinic which looked like a walk-in place with several doctors (all women, for some reason), and when I was just about to leave and standing on the other side of the reception counter, a doctor (standing quite far away) said to me as a kind of afterthought, "Oh, by the way, you have ovarian cancer". I nearly jumped a foot and said, "Isn't that serious?" (or maybe I just thought it). She said, "Oh no, you'll just have a little jab of pain in your side once in a while, nothing to worry about." She demonstrated by poking herself in the lower abdomen.

I was protesting "but, but. . . ", mostly in my mind. Then she either told me, or I decided on my own, to see my own doctor, and she said the same sort of thing, that ovarian cancer was nothing serious, and to wait, but I kept insisting it could be deadly and all those magazine articles said to get it treated immediately. She seemed very casual about it, actually dismissive, and said something like, "Just wait until the pain gets really unbearable, and then we can treat it." I felt completely helpless and unmoored.

But it got worse. I began to realize that there had been no diagnostic tests done at all to determine this, almost like it was a guess. Didn't I need an MR or whatever it's called, or at least a pelvic exam? I also knew it was on the left side, though I had no symptoms. I remember thinking I just had to find someone who would take this seriously before it got so advanced as to be untreatable. 

I just remembered this part now: since I had made such a fuss about thinking this was serious, they allowed me to take part in some sort of support group. I had the feeling it was a way to get me to face the fact that I wasn't really sick, and also to indulge me and throw me a bone so I'd be quiet. All the women had a different health issue, though some of them seemed to be there just for the social outlet and to get out of the house. Many of them were young mothers with small children climbing all over them and strollers parked.


We sat in a circle as if we were in a 12-step meeting. The sense was that each person would get to "share" about what their diagnosis was, but I had the strong feeling I was here because they believed I was a crackpot who somehow thought she had something seriously wrong with her. The sharing never really started, as the dream trailed off then. I woke up with a sick feeling and dread that maybe it was a premonition.

But the sense of not being listened to is something most women have experienced, especially if the issue is reproductive. (Men's concerns about their plumbing are treated with grave seriousness as the doctor carefully examines the family jewels.) The sense is that you're embarrassing them, a weird twist, or at very least wasting their time, and that you definitely shouldn't be talking about this or even really thinking about it.


Meantime, the media tell you to rush to your doctor at the first twinge, laying out the dire consequences if YOU are negligent (never your doctor) about your health. And we won't even get into the unresolved-emotional-issues crap that just compounds our pain. There is no such thing as the complete resolution of emotional issues. You just give it your best shot. It's really about as controllable as genetics, which may turn out to be the final arbiter of health or illness, or even how long you live.

So. . . if I want to get all symbolic here, what does the dream mean? All the doctors in this scenario were middle-aged women, and my feeling was, if THEY don't understand this or listen to me, who will? I was on the other side of the counter, almost stranded on an island. No one had done any tests; it was a kind of guess that nevertheless determined my life or death.  It was almost yelled at me across the room, like, "Don't forget to apply the ointment three times a day" or something, or maybe "you left your earrings on the table".

Ovaries. Well, OK, in my case they've closed up shop, and a good thing too, because for some strange reason I never really enjoyed the menstrual cycle and its relentless 35-year reign. More than they want to admit, women's lives revolve around it. Certainly if you want a child and can't have one, it becomes paramount.

And oh, the often-agonizing slowdown as nature applies the brakes to reproduction, not all at once of course, but in fits and starts. Just when you think it's all settled, it's as if someone leaves the hand brake on your car and simultaneously stomps on the gas. Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech!


Why it's set up this way is anyone's guess. It's as if we are biologically programmed to have 19 babies or something, like those women on reality shows. There are billions and billions of people straining Earth's resources, with billions more to come, and it all seems to come down to ovaries, to fertility, that plucky little egg machine that doesn't give up its job without a protracted (say, ten-year) fight.

Then there's the "oh, it must be menopause" thing, explaining everything from mood swings to murder. The ancient fear-based belief that women become dessicated crones and go completely out of their minds at 50 still persists, in spite of all the "wisdom of menopause" propaganda espoused by feminist doctors who want to sell a lot of books to women desperate for a bit of good news.

I don't feel like a crone, and I hate the word. It's about as attractive as battleaxe or hag. IActually, it surprises me how little I've changed. There's a sense of relief, of course. No more mini-, maxi-, light/medium/superabsorbent anything, no more running through fields in slow motion with a gauzy dress on. No more "accidents". I have a tendency to tire sooner, but I can live with that. I was afraid of becoming all hairy: instead, almost all my leg hair fell out and I don't have to shave any more. I can still have an orgasm, and how (and I was absolutely certain that it would fade away to nothing: nobody told me otherwise, so I just assumed it would be all over). My body sure hasn't forgotten that one, though it amazes me, with these supposedly dessicated, peach-pit ovaries (not to mention all the social pressure to be sexless) that I can feel anything sexual at all.

Still. Ovarian cancer. Something in my psyche rumbles seismically over this possibility. I pray the dream isn't a premonition, or, as they say, precognitive. Even worse would be the "oh well, let's just blow her off" attitude of these wise-crone-figure doctors (or are they mothers? Jesus.) The sense that she's a little whacky, but can be bought off and kept quiet by being included in a group of lonely hypochondriacs. 


It's funny that our society has recently wholeheartedly embraced breast cancer (which is, let's face it, much more sexy than all the others since it involves "boobies"), but hasn't got around to ovarian cancer, though it is infinitely more deadly. There's an attempt, I know, but their color, instead of a jolly, healthy pink, is teal.

I wonder who thought that one up: "hey, I know! Let's pick the most ambiguous and obscure color there is: both green and blue, but somehow neither; a colour some people don't even know the name of, so no one will think to buy our pencils and tshirts and coffee mugs in a million years."

But there's more going on than a "teal campaign". The aversion pertains to society's deep dread and even loathing of the female reproductive cycle. It's much harder to paint a happy face on an ovary, or to have a run for an egg factory, particularly one that's run out of eggs.

Sorry, we're fresh out today. But still walking on eggshells of uncertainty.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

Willie can Wail: Disney's all-time worst character

Ah, childhood! Was it ever as grotesque as this? Probably not, because until recently I never saw the animated version of what we used to call "Willie the Whale". We had a set of 78 rpm records telling the story, with a lot of long, boring, unnecessary narration to fill in the gaps. There was a picture of Willie dressed as Pagliacci on the cover, with a gigantic fake nose and a tutu.

It was decades later that I learned that Willie's melancholy story was actually an animated short tacked on to the end of a little-seen Disney movie called Make Mine Music. I don't know much about it, and frankly I don't feel like looking it up.

I am sorry to say this, but Willie was one of the most grotesque Disney figures of all time. You can't animate a whale, not like this anyway, with his mouth in the middle of his stomach. He looks like a foam-rubber toaster, and his inside is worse than his outside, with three gross-looking tonsils (or whatever) hanging down, indicating that he could sing tenor, baritone and bass all at the same time.

Disney did a much better whale with Pinocchio, but this one was spozed-ta be a friendly one, the reason for his loveable squashy shape. What ruined the effect was the bizarre opening in his stomach where hot air (and arias) blasted out. (And if his mouth was on his underside, how could he get a decent breath?)The story is about "a voice that sang at sea" that turns out to be Nelson Eddie pretending to be a large rectangular sea creature. Soon a demented scholar named Tetti-Tatti goes after him with a harpoon, claiming "the whale has-a swallowed a hoppera-singer!". (Though most hoppera-singers look like they've swallowed a whale.)

It's confusing to me at the end, as it's not really clear if his career singing "grand opera" (a creaky term if ever there was one) at "the Met" (which I assumed was the Metropolitan, a local department store) was all just a dream. At the conclusion there are some ferocious Melville moments, and the ending is more depressing than Old Yeller. But we get to see Willie at the end, presumably in heaven, now colored lavender with green wings and a halo. The Pearly Gates have a sign hung on them: SOLD OUT. We always suspected "our Willie" was a sellout: success spoils everybody.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

The Whale who Wanted to Sing at the Met: Part 1

The Whale who Wanted to Sing at the Met: Part 2

After searching fruitlessly (saxophone poem)

AFTER SEARCHING FRUITLESSLY FOR A POEM BY BILLY COLLINS CALLED THE INVENTION OF THE SAXOPHONE, THE AUTHOR TAKES IT UPON HERSELF TO WRITE ONE OF HER OWN

i don’t know who invented this

reflexive question mark of an instrument

but i think it was a good thing

for it’s great to look at,

with fat keys like frog eyes
and a big bell like royal jelly
you could keep flowers in there if you wanted to,
extra socks
or even a clock

Snakes kink too

and this sound is snakey
purply mauve as the deepest bruise
and raunchy
as a man in love

smoked as some cat of the night

disappearing over a fence
it makes leaps
(but only because it has to)

There is no

morning saxophone

this is a sound that

pulls the shades down

a hangover

howl

fading to twilight

or the blackmost

belly button
of the night

Few can wrap their lips around

this gooseneck
without some harm coming to them
for this is an instrument
with a long history of
hollowing out
all but the most hardy

Bird flew into a pane

of glass and was
smashed

we don’t know why it does this to people

(maybe it was mad at him
for taking it all to such extremes)

but how could you blow this thing

halfway

i ask you

how could you rear back

in some great pained whiplash of the spine
without a sense of
terrible commitment

i never much cared for

saxophones myself

until i heard one blown correctly at last

jazz is a genre i will never understand
but perhaps that’s good
for like the priesthood, one must enter into it

without question

reservation
or doubt

Death of a church

It's not always sad when something dies: in fact, doesn't everyone, doesn't everything die in its own time?  But the death of a once-vital community is sometimes pretty sad to watch.


When I stumbled on this video while looking for something else, I felt a jolt from the past: this was Park Street United Church in Chatham, Ontario, the church I attended from birth to age 16. It's typical of the sort of edifice you saw back then, a huge brick building in traditional style, with stained glass windows, a gigantic pipe organ, varnishy-smelling pews, dusty red carpet, and cavernous echoing acoustics.

Well, maybe not. As a kid I don't remember that echo. That's because the sanctuary would be full most Sundays. I have heard that at one point this church had something like 1000 members and adherents. It also attracted a firebrand, one of the most controversial ministers in Canadian history, a man who was eventually defrocked and even jailed for his pains.



I've written about him before: Rev. Russell Horsburgh, self-nicknamed "The Rev". He burned into the skin of my consciousness like a brand, so much so that I felt compelled to weave him into the narrative of my second novel, Mallory. This was the early '60s, and the Rev hit the ground running, implementing so many controversial social programs that many people wondered just what the hell they had signed on for.

I won't go into the whole story here, though I will provide a link to two excellent articles written about him, telling me things that my six-to-ten-year-old self never knew. But I did know some things: that people were buzzing and whispering, that the air was crackling with suspicion and accusations of teenagers drinking and even having sex in the church basement. Those who supported Horsburgh - and believe me, I know from subsequent experience that ANY mininster, no matter how corrupt, will split a congregation and siphon off a band of supporters - claimed it was a witch hunt. There were stories on national TV, newspaper articles, even a book (or two). 




I will quote (below) a postscript I wrote to the original articles, including some personal memories of Horsburgh, whom I remember as an abrasive, belligerent man. As he was increasingly opposed, he became paranoid and sometimes frightening. It was possible to see him as a martyr, but I personally don't doubt those rumors about the young people's group because I saw things going on that dumbfounded me. I  just didn't understand how all this could be happening in the church I was baptized in.


Postscript. Though the Gilberts have a right to their opinion based on what they were able to piece together about Horsburgh, the fact remains that they were not there when it happened. Public opinion eventually swung back in Horsburgh's favor, but my own view is that it swung too far.

I was ten years old when Horsburgh was removed from Park Street United Church. I remember a belligerent, browbeating figure literally pounding the pulpit as he harangued his astonished congregation about their unforgiveable rigidity and ignorance.

I remember three very drunken teenage boys hanging around outside the church late one evening, guffawing and slurring, "Hey, where's the Rev?"

I remember my father's best friend saying, "he's a psychopath," though at the time I didn't know what that meant.

I remember my mother, the least-gossipy person I knew, whispering to someone, "You know, they found empty liquor bottles in the church basement. And worse."

I remember a church bulletin that had an entire page bizarrely x-ed out. When my older brother held it up to the light, he saw that it contained a fulminating rant aimed directly at the ignorant fools of Park Street United, ending with a famous quote: “You ungrateful people should be ashamed of yourselves. . . . I am sorry I ever freed you from the tyrants and the papists. You ungrateful beasts, you are not worthy of the treasure of the gospel. If you don’t improve, I will stop preaching rather than cast pearls before swine.”

It was signed:

Martin Luther
Russell Horsburgh

The meltdown of a church is agonizing. I've been through it in recent years. I don't think things are ever the same after that, though everyone claims to have experienced rebirth and resurrection. When I watched the video I posted today, I began to see why Park Street United eventually closed its doors. Shot by a professional company, the video is an exercise in awkwardness. It's like the funeral of a very old, very unpleasant man who didn't have too many friends. There are half-empty pews everywhere, and a good many more that are completely vacant. It's as if those members who survived felt obligated to come. The sanctuary echoes eerily, and the service itself is dreary and interminable, without one single spark of passion, enthusiasm or joy.

In this video I see the United Church's demise played out in all its tattered glory. A few years ago the church hired a PR person and set up a web site called Wondercafe (no mention of church anywhere!), which strains so hard to be hip that it's embarrassing. This includes bobblehead Christs and the E-Z Answer Squirrel, which randomly gives yes or no answers to deep spiritual questions.

The fact that the United Church is burying its old identity under this squirm-inducing nonsense reveals a shocking truth: they're even afraid to say who they are! Afraid to align themselves with wheezy pipe organs and elderly congregants who attend because that's what they've always done.

Where is the passion? The only passion I have experienced in a church came from a man who in retrospect seems to have been half-crazy. He was brought down for his pains, and maybe he had to be. But when the church goes on and on and on about revitalization and finally paying off its debts, I see a sinking ship, and people trying to bail it out with a thimble.

Unfortunately (for me), the only churches I see with any real spirit are fundamentalist. The music is rollicking, the messages proclaimed like great good news. And I can't be any part of it. They don't need me because they're burgeoning already: a great many people seem to want to be told what to believe.

Meantime, we're left with E-Z answers and a strained attempt to appear "relevant". But watch this video, and you'll see it all laid bare, the demise of an institution that is slowly but surely heading towards oblivion.

http://www.cktimes.ca/archives/column/11/9271.html

http://www.cktimes.ca/archives/column/11/9302.html

http://www.wondercafe.ca/webisodes/ez-answer-squirrel

Margaret's Links:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

Pumpkin Patch Kids

Erica the Sunny Sunflower!

Lauren with. . . wooden tomatoes?

Hey, I can't lift this thing!!

                                                

                                     We want this many. . . to start.

 

                                     No, we're not putting them back!

                  How about THIS many?



                                

   PUMPKINS FOR EVERYONE!

http://www.laitypumpkinpatch.com/

Necking

A most painful-looking erotic display. Or do they hate each other? George and Martha Giraffe?

You'd better go in disguise

Back when I had That Other Blog, in that other lifetime, I tried and tried to find this version of Teddy Bears' Picnic, an excerpt from the superb 1986 British miniseries The Singing Detective. (I've ordered a DVD copy and will probably be commenting on it later.)

But the thing is. . . I wasn't looking for this one at all, not this time. I was looking for the one I stumbled on when looking for this one before.  It was a chorus of what sounded like English people, old hippies with long grey hair and floral crowns and jerkins and that sort of thing (whatever a jerkin is). They sang it delightfully, buoyantly, but I didn't keep the link, or if I did, I'll be damned if I know where it is.

There's a movie version of The Singing Detective, but don't bother with it. The '86 series is pure surrealism. Its hero is a tortured writer of crime novels,  his skin rotting away from psoriatic arthritis (the same soul-rot afflicting my afflicted sister). It has almost been forgotten, but not by me. This little taste will give you. . . a little taste. Now 'scuse me while I hunt for that other one.

Thanks for the Memory

This clip is nothing less than a piece of film history: Bob Hope and Shirley Ross singing "Thanks for the Memory" (NOT "memories!") in a movie called The Big Broadcast of 1938.

I first saw this movie while sleeping in the den (a special privilege granted only on a non-school night) in about 1964. The pullout bed was excruciating, but that was all part of the experience: I'd watch a Cleveland creature-feature show called Hoolihan and Big Chuck (and, incredibly, the same Big Chuck still hosts that show after all these years), re-re-re-reruns of shows like Topper and Love That Bob, and, sometimes, a gem like this one.

There was something of a W. C. Fields revival going on at that time. Before I'd even seen one of his movies, my Dad would boom on and on in his gusty, Bushmills-inspired way about Fields, and even quote from some of his monologues: the "Ethiopian in the fuel supply," "where will you be at noon tonight?" and "I cut a path through a solid wall of human flesh" (from another Fields gem, Mississipi, with a startlingly young, almost effeminate Bing Crosby).

I can't say as we really believed what my Dad was saying until this Fields festival began. We saw Mississipi, The Bank Dick, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, and My Little Chickadee (where Fields and Mae West basically cancelled each other out).

But then came The Big Broadcast, probably at about 2 a.m. At some point my older brother stumbled in from a dance, likely tanked, and we began to record the sound track of the movie on an old Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder with a fan-shaped microphone that weighed 47 pounds.

The movie was about a race between two ocean liners, the Colossal and the Gigantic. Fields is supposed to be in charge but ends up on the wrong boat (after his golf cart becomes airborne and lands on the deck), wreaking havoc throughout. To see him perform both his golf routine and his pool routine in one movie makes it worth the price of admission.

But the movie is also pretty excruciating. Bob Hope is the emcee (with the running gag that he can't get a laugh from the audience)for a dreary assortment of yesterday's performers: Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm Orchestra (a kind of clumsy forerunner of Lawrence Welk), the very gay-looking Latin lover Tito Guizarre, and (shudder) the infamous Nazi sympathizer Kirsten Flagstad, who sings Brunhilde's Battle Cry from (Lohengrin? Whatever.)

Then comes this song, fairly near the end. Obviously, the two of them have had a tempestuous marriage that finally blew apart. But watch Shirley Ross as she registers each tart, tender line (Hope basically just sits there, his eyes like the dots on dice). There are many extra verses here that you will never find if you look up the lyrics anywhere. The song is evocative and never corny. It took me forever to figure out the subtle code of these lines:

"Letters with sweet little secrets
That couldn't be put in a daywire
Too bad it all had to go haywire
That's life, I guess
I love. . . your dress."

The song ends with the haunting lines:

"Strictly entre-nous, darling, how are you
And how are all those little dreams that never did come true. . . "

"Little dreams." "Sweet little secrets." In spite of trying, they never did have a child. He went on to get married three or four more times. He's a cad, and she knows it. He has a sort of surface charm, a slickness. But he's a great straight man for Ross' brilliance, and he does not try to out-react or out-shine her. Perhaps he made the right decision after all.

The song stuck to him for the rest of his life (well over 100 years), always misquoted as "Thanks for the Memories". But here is where it started, and, as far as I am concerned, ended too.