SPEECHLESS

I sit on my lumpy sofa with a glass Cabernet from Chile and my new laptop.

My body feels beat up with pieces of glass stuck into it.

I have made chicken breasts baked in onion soup with cut up yams, red onions and pieces of garlic in my new Crate & Barrel casserole dish.

I am doing laundry and straightening up! Cleaning up my apartment is huge.

To clean, to move things, to fold, to put away... my body throbs from overuse.

I shouldn't have gone to work today but work can be fun. An escape.

Sally and I talk about Mark Cohen the famed art collector in Greenwich. She's writing an article about him in ART magazine.

"I just read something about him in Details" I tell her.

Sally is great. I learn she is the middle child of nine catholic children.

I tell her, " I know about you big Catholic families. I grew up in Conn. You all stick together, unlike the isolated, depressive, fragile protestants. (my clan)

I catch handsome Jason stealing a look my way.

Dan, my cubicle neighbor, has been out until five this morning drinking vodka at a club in the east fifties, slept at his girlfriend's, got up at eight to help a friend move, took an hour nap and came to work hugely hungover with a poised twentyish smile on his tanned face. Young Dan is superman.

(I sometimes pondered (what it would feel like) to have a cranky aging body because my body has always felt so magically young. Springy and easy)

After lunch,

(however)

there is nonsense at work.

My pretend boss orders me into a conference room to dress me down for staying on the phone while he made an announcement.

(I was talking to my eighty year old mother about my "situation", my mother wants to pretend i have a foot problem. I STRESS to her that it is not JUST a foot problem. I am ruthless. I feel guilty. The conversation is intense and meandering.

My mother loses color in her voice when you pull out the bald facts. Like you're disregarding the rules of manners or you're accusing her of something.

So,

My pretend boss tells me it is disrespectful to talk on the phone when he is talking.

(I didn't hear him) and he's not really my boss.

Never the less, I am so outraged at this silly pomposity, I am speechless.
I can't make a sound with my vocal chords

I open my mouth, my throat closes up.

It might appear that I am having a heart attack.

Pretend Boss is frightened and concerned. Like he is not sure if he's supposed to administer the Heimlich maneuver.

But, I manage to eek out... "NO! I was talking to my mother. Any person in this office would not hang up on their mother to hear some announcement."

(these announcements are continues)

Pretend boss is worried that he looks powerless in front of me. (I think)

He suggests that next time I call from a conference room.

I nod okay and walk out with out saying a word.

I am so angry (and now surprised) at the immediate drama lodged in my throat, I can't concentrate.

I couldn't make words.

Pretend boss (to his credit) is worried about the exchange and (perhaps) ashamed of his posturing, and he stops by my cubicle and apologizes.

Flummoxed, I leave my iPhone at work.

LETTER

Hello Dr. Ranjan,
I am well. I hope you are too.

My next appointment is May 29th. Since I haven't had any new tests, I was wondering what to expect from this appointment.

Also, I was wondering about your thoughts about this...

Best,

Mr. Roberts

Number 153 of Nov 23, 2007.
>
> “Lithium "to slow down, with a certainty in excess of 95%, the progression of ALS". These exceptional results came out from an Italian study on 48 ALS patients, 32 treated with standard therapy of riluzol, 16 treated with riluzol and lithium. These results have already been submitted to a well-known international journal that is now verifying the data and may publish the report shortly. "15 months after the start of the study, 30% of the patients treated only with riluzol died. In the second group there were no deaths, even though half of the patients in the group had the most aggressive form of ALS, that is bulbar". This is what one of the Italian researchers, experimenting with the use of lithium against ALS, Francesco Fornai, associate professor of the department of Human Morphology and applied biology at the University of Pisa, stated. Furthermore, utilizing parameters from the neurological scale to measure progression, there was no significant
> deterioration of the ALSFRS-R, while the decline was evident within 3 months in the other group. At the end of the study the decline was measured at 50%. A preview of this study was given on Nov 8, 2007 during the ***IV LIMPE Congress, the Italian league in the fight against Parkinson's disease.”
>
>

CRACKER BARREL

I meet Dustin at 7:30 in the morning in the dirty (in between) at Port Authority.

We sit and smile on the bus to the airport.
We have fragmented hopeful tidbits of conversation like two kids excited to go back to camp.

We pick up a rental car at Newark and drive ten hours to Athens Ohio by way of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and finally Ohio.

The drive there is fun and tiresome. But the landscape on the way there is decorated with trees in various stages of bloom. There are tons of different shades of colors for he emerging Spring buds. We talk about a recurring purple tree that we never did find out, the name of.

Whenever I drive out of the city I am reminded that the land outside of the city is quiet and more open and easy and also somewhat boring.

New York is the emerald city.

Dustin and I have dinner at a Cracker Barrel. Cracker Barrel is an amusement park style restaurant. The wait staff is cast as county folk and it has a large gift shop selling the myth that Maryland is really just like "Hee Haw".

Our 82 year old hostess Zoey is tiny and humped over with large teased up blue hair and war paint on her sunken face.
Zoey has clearly suffered a stroke.

I ask if she'll be our waitress, and she replies with worldly self knowledge, humility and kindness,

"Oh no, Oh, I'm too awkward to be your waitress."

(She understands these out of towners might be laughing at her, egging her on for a good show and Zoey is game.