Clinic

Clinic
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

Getting weekly glutathione on Second Avenue and 42nd Street

LITHIUM, results are disappointing (PLM)

There was a conference call today (Oct. 1, 09') with Doctors doing study and subjects and family members. It was an explanation on the study content and findings to reasons for stopping study. And then a qustion asking time for subjects and or family members. They concluded that the subjects taking Lithium actually progressed a little faster that subject taking pilcbo. In early Nov. 09' results from the study will be available and subjects in the study will find out what they were taking. Have to turn over every rock! I was a subject.

Kevin writes from Sweden

Hi Charlie!

Cool! I say "Hello"! back to you of course! :-)
I think NYC seems exciting and I wish I could go there in the future.
For how long have you had ALS?

Take care!

Kevin
______________________________________

Hi Kevin,

Yeah New York is fun but I've lived here most of my life.

I still bike around the city on a battery bike but I can't really cross the street without falling down.
I feel like I noticed tiny problems three or four years ago.
My body would never feel rested after I worked out.
I did YOGA three times a week and my balance kept getting worse!
When I played tennis I'd need to sleep afterwards.
But officially my foot stopped working and I stopped being able to run about 15 months ago.
I started tripping as I walked to work.

I haven't done much research. I DID change my diet and I take a ton of vitamins.
Just added coconut oil to keep weight on. I like the taste!

Charlie

Williamsburg Brooklyn

Williamsburg Brooklyn
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

Williamsburg Brooklyn

Williamsburg Brooklyn
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

Williamsburg Brooklyn

Williamsburg Brooklyn
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

Williamsburg Brooklyn

Williamsburg Brooklyn
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts

GRACE

Sunday morning ,

we cab to the Cupping Room in SOHO.

I flirt with the waiter.

The scene is robust handsome New Yorkers, sloppy and tired from Saturday night.

I feel like an outsider (now) I am impressed with the crowd - look how they move! So youngish and urban (catalog ready).

We tip toe ( I hang onto cars, to walls, to my mother) to see my favorite furniture store on Wooster Street, Room and Board.  We stare at furniture.  We sit on sofas. We imagine different pieces for my boxy apartment.

We come home and nap.

We cab to SHREK. I got cheap tickets on the web.

Turns out we're in the very back of the very last balcony.

An usher sees me struggling up the stairs.

"Let me see your tickets... these seats are WAY too far away for you. You'll never make it."

She calls a house manager and they seat us down in the orchestra.

I feel lucky and sad.

Like I'm a kid going to camp because I've got  cancer.

Shrek strains under all those sets and costumes. Too busy. My eyes don't know where to focus.

EVERYTHING is green.  I don't find fairy tale characters funny or compelling.

But, Christopher Sieber is so good. Still I am bitter that I am not up there.

We take a pedicab home for $20.

I ask our biker (this pedicab driver is from Africa and speaks broken english) to take the roof down but he misunderstands and zips up all the plastic windows. It's like riding in a plastic tent.

When we get home, we have a glass of wine and my mother tells me,

"We need to redo your apartment. It's not set up right.  It's my fault (she says) because I dumped all this furniture on you."

It's kind of true she did. And something occurs to me about... sticking up for yourself?  about not agreeing to what you don't want just because you can't get what you really want (or something) In the moment, deicide what you want and have the (sense of self) to wait for it.  Skip the crumbs.

In the morning, we have coffee and read the New York Times.

I mention an article about Barbra Streisand. "Lucky Streisand Fans Were A-listers for a Night".

Barbra Streisand is promoting her new album "Love is the Answer".

The word "Love" is used so freely. It's like a weapon.

(I'm reading Christopher Isherwood's journals. Last night I read a section that struck me.

He's talking about a book an ex-gangster has written called "Love Can Open Prison Doors."

Isherwood writes, " The book is terribly sentimental, and far too breezily written. It recommends "love" as the universal cure-all - without ever properly explaining what "love" is.

And so it is with me.  I read "love" cures! and  G-d is love!  "Love" seems an evasive concept. (duh)

I ask my mom - (continuing with my Barbra Streisand theme - "Everyone talks about "love" being the answer to everything ... but what really IS love anyway?"

My mother (from across the room) says carefully, "well I think about "love" the way I think of you. I love you without conditions... unconditionally."

This frank appraisal is too much for me and I move onto... "well, I think it has something to do with treating your neighbor as you would you treat yourself. That seems to be the cornerstone of all religions,

of all self-help books. Also, in Kaballah, they talk about the greatest kind of love, the most powerful being kindness and generosity that is given without recognition. This is true grace."

(I - of course- do not lead my life with that kind of grace.
But I can read about it.
I can write about it can't I? - (reader) ?)

It's time for my mother to go. She wheels her rolling suitcase behind her and I follow her down the hallway, down the elevator, across the lobby out to the circular drive. She spots a cab and doesn't stop to say goodbye.  She yells "Goodbye!" without looking back and she's gone.

The Beresford

The Beresford is missing its fourth tower because the builder ran out of money, our tour guide Bronco told us.

One: Number 31, 1950 Jackson Pollock

TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE

I remember watching the TV interviews on ABC.
I remember trying to memorize what Morrie said.
Something about love being the answer. Letting go of anger.

Two summers ago I picked up the book at a tag-sale on the Cape.
I read it in a few sittings. The book didn't make much of an impact compared to the TV interviews.
The book is still sitting on a dresser in my parent's house in Cape Cod.

Tonight, I learn, that Morrie died from ALS. Oh.

I didn't remember that. Two summers ago I didn't really ever consider ALS.
I didn't consider what he had.
All diseases seemed the same to me.

Somehow I feel competitive with Morrie (or)  maybe  a little cynical.
All those wonderful thoughts he had, I have had them too (I think).
I'll have to look at the book again.
But, I don't know.

Stuart at the Frick

Stuart made good money painting copies of his original painting of Washington.

Frick only collected american painters Whistler and Stuart.

Gilbert Stuart (1755 - 1828)
George Washington, 1795-1796
oil on canvas

The Devil at the FRICK

My mother liked this Duccio painting at the Frick.

Christ is offered all the kingdoms in the world by a very scary looking devil.

The kingdoms look like they are made of sugar.

Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1255 - c.1319)

Although Duccio was the leading Sienese master of his time, little is known about his life. The earliest record of the artist dates from 1278. In 1285 he received the commission for a painting believed to be the Rucellai Madonna now in the Uffizi. His greatest work, however, is the Maestà, a large altarpiece first mentioned in a document of 1308 and finished by June 9, 1311, when it was carried triumphantly through the city streets to the Duomo of Siena.

Whistler at the FRICK

Whistler is compared to Rothko in this painting.

Commentary: Rosa Corder was a painter and the mistress of Whistler’s unofficial agent, Charles Howell. It is said that Whistler observed her in Chelsea one day wearing a brown dress and passing before a black door and, struck by the color effect, used it as the basis for this portrait. Miss Corder later reported that she had posed for the picture some forty times. An acquaintance  remembered her as a person of “a beautiful stillness.”