Bullfighting

I have what I consider to be two favorite books of all the books I've ever read and presumably, all the books I will ever read. Which isn't to say that I don't expect to fall in love with other books; on the contrary, I both hope and expect I will at least a hundred more times. But there are two books that are automatically on the desert island list and will remain on that list as long as the minute possibility of me landing of that desert island (apparently with enough foresight to bring a couple favorite books, a couple favorite CDs & a couple favorite movies) exists.

One of them is, of course, Stephen King's It. I spent an entire semester in high school hiding that book (unsuccessfully, it's a behemoth) in various textbooks. I don't remember much about that semester - I didn't get too much sleep. That was, at that point in my life, the longest book I'd ever read and the first time I had ever immersed myself so completely in a fictional world. My dreams of being a writer and creating fictional worlds that readers could so easily immerse themselves in began that semester. When asked the question about my favorite author, invariably, and due in great part to this book, I will point to Stephen King as the one.

I encountered my second favorite book after college, one bored Saturday when I lived with my mom in San Francisco. My mom is an obsessive reader. Her favorites range from SciFi-Fantasy to Biographies to Mystery to Philosophy to Nancy Drews. She will read just about anything. Her favorite author, though, is James Michener. I can recall her curled up in her orange chair, set on a forest green carpet and backed by forest green velvet drapes reading thick black-covered books with the names of states like Hawaii, Alaska and Texas and other regions like Caribbean, Chesapeake and Space. She devoured those books, one right after the other. And after each one, she would hold it out to me and ask me if I wanted to read it. I declined every time. Despite my burgeoning love for epic fiction, I was never enthralled with the concept of the historical fiction that he was known for.

But one bored Saturday, after having read through the majority of Mom's SciFi and Fantasy books, I pulled out James Michener's The Drifters. It lay at the end of her line of Micheners, the dust cover torn and frayed and the only one with a non-location title. In fact, the character-centric title is what stopped my finger on its spine and made me pull it out for a second look. And the description on the inside flap, about six young people traveling the world in the Sixties is what made me carry it across the room to Mom's orange chair and curl up with it, a curtain-less picture window with a view of the Inner Sunset behind me.

The plot is as simple as it reads on the inside flap of the dust jacket: six young men and women (three of each) who randomly meet in the resort town of Torremolinos, Spain and together, embark upon a journey across Europe and northern Africa as they discover each other and themselves. I could totally write book jacket synopses! In fact, that may be exactly what the jacket said. The instigating character in the story (the unmoved mover, if you will) is an older gentleman, an investment analyst whose job entails traveling across the world to meet with the clients of Switzerland's World Mutual Bank, a job I very much wanted to pursue after reading this book while on the bus and streetcar commuting to my vapid position as a glorified receptionist at an ad agency. George Fairbanks coincidentally knows four of the six young people through dealings with their parents and grandparents and therefore is welcome ingratiating himself in their lives and journeys.

It is those journeys that captured my then-young and restive imagination. At that point, I had never left the continental United States with the exception of an afternoon in La Playa de Rosarita on the Baja peninsula. I had long dreamed of backpacking across Europe, just me and my thoughts, but that was a dream that was not to come true for me. I was destined for college and the working world, how droll. I am still trying to escape those shackles.

One of the places the drifters visit is Pamplona, Spain. There, they meet up with Mr. Fairbanks and his friend Harvey Holt who is a technical representative on radars in remote locations, a job I decided was better suited to me than investment banking and still full of travel and intrigue. Harvey is a man's man - he works hard and then he plays hard. Every year, he travels to Pamplona, Spain for the Running of the Bulls and Mr. Fairbanks talks the young people into meeting him and Holt there for one of these visits.

Up till reading this portion of the book, I had never given much thought to bulls, running or in the ring. I'd seen pictures of matadors in their fancy outfits and red capes, in impossible positions as a large bull bears down on them and the crowd cheers but that had been the extent of my exposure to the tradition. But Michener, the man who builds an island up from the first amoeba to a multi-generational modern family, was not going to give the subject a light treatment. From the moment the six drifters meet up with Harvey and Mr. Fairbanks in the fictional Bar Vasca and are treated to Bull Ball Stew, not the technical name but the general idea, the tradition is thoroughly explored in the Pamplona chapters. Things I learned from Michener:

*The Running of the Bulls is actually a multi-day event with runs happening each morning and the fights each afternoon.
*There is a hospital at the bottom of the hill that excels in goring wounds, as one might expect
*The danger in the Run is in the stray bull who doesn't keep up with the pack and arrives late on the scene, frenzied and therefore much more dangerous
*Another danger in the Run is inexperienced runners who think they are man enough until the moment they see the bulls and then create a danger for themselves and those around them, sometimes pulling a more experienced runner in between them and the charging bull, putting him in much greater danger
*The most dangerous of the bulls are drugged and heavy weights are dropped on their kidneys so that they are weakened and less of a danger to the runners and the matador

While I enjoy the Pamplona chapters - there is so much more going on during those chapters than merely the Running and the Fights - they have certainly had a hand in bringing out my inner indignation at the treatment of the bulls. So much so that when I hear of the Running coming around again, I always, always shake my head and say aloud to no one in particular: I hope they gore the whole lot of 'em. There was a story earlier this year of a matador, Julio Aparicio, being gored in the throat and though the pictures were far more gruesome than I prefer to see, I felt only justification at his injury - he didn't die. I know, it's not nice. I shouldn't wish for harm to come to other humans but I am so disgusted by the tradition and the fact that they cheat in order to make sure the humans win that I want, for once, the humans to not win. I want the bull to win. In our recent history, we have done such a great job of recognizing our many and varied inhumanities and learning and progressing out of them - abolishing slavery, giving equality to all citizens (western world) - we have a great deal to be proud of in our growth as a species but we still have that nasty little habit of dominating the other species, as if it stems from a bible of some sort. We are still working on the full equality of all humans so maybe I'm jumping the gun in hoping we can start having a little respect for all Life, but can we start that soon please? I know I eat meat and I know I have some leather in a closet and I don't have a non-hypocritical way of explaining that other than the Food Chain so we'll not address my hypocrisy just yet. Suffice it to say, I am learning to enjoy more and more vegetarian meals and maybe one day will be able to eliminate an animal or two from my diet. And I really don't mind faux leather so long as it holds up like the real thing. But anyway ...

CNN has a story this morning that gives me hope for the respecting all Life dream which is where this whole rambling blog post comes from. It seems that despite the deep tradition of bullfighting in Spain, the Catalonia Parliament voted 68 to 55 to ban it. This landmark decision won't apply to all of Spain, only to the Catalonia region which encompasses the western portion of the Spanish mainland, including Barcelona. It is nonetheless, a huge blow to the "sport" and one that I hope is only the beginning. In the article, a young Catalonian bullfighter laments the possibility of the end of the career he has just begun but you know what, he can go back to school for something less ... cruel and ... inhumane. Become a software engineer, you don't need to drug or dominate anyone in the IT industry and you can make a lot of money. Sure, there will be less girls flocking around you but the upside is you won't have to wear such flamboyant and sequin-infested outfits and that can only be a good thing, right?

I doubt that I will see an end to red-belted men in white shirts and pants feeling as though they have something to prove every July in Pamplona in my lifetime and that bullfighting will continue to flourish and excite in Spain and Mexico but all great progresses in human history have begun with a single step and I am so happy to see Catalonia take this step.

My Life in Fiction

My audio books as of late have had a habit of mirroring, or at the very least, commenting on my own personal current events.

Starting with The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet in which a young Chinese boy befriends and falls in love with a young Japanese girl in WWII Seattle. I began reading this as I started planning our few days in Seattle this summer to precede the take-off of our Alaskan cruise. Not only did I enjoy the story very much, but I also planned an afternoon of our Seattle adventure to be centered around the hotel in the title of the book, the Panama Hotel.

A book or two later, I embarked upon the story of a lifelong friendship between two women that, in that genre, is always destined to end badly. And it did, right around the same time and in much the same way as my friend Lisa's life ended. So for the long rides up to her house and back, the ending of that audio book added to my already healthy fall of tears.

And now, another book about female friendships - not sure why I landed on this genre as of late; the library seems to always be out of the other books that I'd prefer to read. It too is apparently following the familiar pattern of ending in tragedy and this tragedy is too much like Lisa's. A cancer that has metastasized to the liver but the primary node cannot be found. And now I understand the trepidation that came along with Lisa's chemo treatments, that without knowing what cells to attack, the chemo needed to be more general which is a danger to healthy cells as well as unhealthy ones.

What next: a book about camping in Indiana? Hopefully it will be more light-hearted - it's damn hard to drive with tears in your eyes.

It's Time

I've been struggling to write this next blog post and have written a few different versions already that I've then subsequently closed without saving. Perhaps this one will make it all the way.

Both Jason and I received a Facebook message from a friend a few months ago letting us know that she had been diagnosed with lymphoma. The news was less shocking than you'd imagine as this friend has had a passing acquaintance with various forms of cancer for the entire time we've known her. While we didn't reconnect with her as often as we should have, it seemed like everytime we did, she had just gotten out of the hospital for this or that. Her health was shaky, at best.

It turns out that lymphoma wasn't the correct diagnosis and that the situation was much more dire than any of the previous cancers she'd had. Within a month, she was undergoing chemo treatments for a mysterious form of cancer that began as a large tumor in her stomach and had started to spread to her liver. Her boyfriend, Jake, kept us informed of her progress when she was too weak to talk and one night, when Jason was out at a consultation, my phoen rang and it was her. I picked up immediately and turned off the television. We had an amazing conversation full of positivity and hope and liberally sprinkled with cold, hard facts. Her first round of chemo had gone well and the doctors were very pleased with how much the tumors had been beaten back. They would continue the same path and hope for even better results the next time. We made a date for me to come up the next week and I hung up from that conversation feeling full of hope for Lisa's prognosis.

That was the last time I spoke to her. The date we'd made ended up having to be cancelled because the doctors had pushed her chemo up to more aggressively attack the tumors and after that second and final round, they discovered that the cancer had gotten smart and dodged that which threatened it. It began to consume her liver, a much more important organ than I'd ever realized which was needed to process the toxins in the chemo. They called her in and told her the bad news. I wasn't there, I don't know how she took it other than through other people's words. I can only imagine how I would have taken news like that, so add a healthy dose of grace and dignity to my conjectured response and that's how I imagine her reaction. The thought of processing news like that devours me.

Jason and I made plans to go see her Sunday April 25th, to say goodbye. On Saturday, Jake called Jason and told him we needed to move it up. Jason had a couple of consultations that early afternoon so we made arrangements to meet up at an Oasis on I-94 since we'd be coming from two different directions and continue on together in one car.

When we got to Lisa's parents' house, we joined a large crew of family and friends who rambled between her room, the living room, the kitchen and the breezeway for smokes. Lisa was unconscious and had been since about noon, right before Jake called Jason. She was never to regain consciousness.

I met three lifelong girl friends who were there originally for a fun sleepover that had tragically turned into a death watch. June, who has known Lisa the longest - since kindergarten - is a petite blond with the bluest eyes and sunny disposition. Nicole shares Lisa's love of all things hippie and is powering through supporting everyone while pregnant. Julie is a constant tower of support for Lisa's mom and Jake as they helplessly watch their girl die. Lisa's friends are vehemently supportive of the process as only intelligent, accepting individuals can be. They massage her feet and hold her hands and hug her mom and fight back their own tears. Truly an amazing group of women to be surrounded by.

Less than twelve hours after we said our goodbyes, Lisa peacefully passed from this world.

I still get teary with a phrase like that. Facebook suggested that I reconnect with my old friend Lisa Rosemann last night. Talk about a rock in the pit of your stomach. I'd give anything to do so, thanks for bringing it up, Facebook. And yet it gets away with it because it is a program and no one gives a program a dirty look when it puts its foot in its mouth.

We followed through the entire process. Went to the wake on Tuesday night. The funeral home was crowded almost the entire evening with friends and family and neighbors and acquaintances and even the mayor of Antioch showed up at one point. They had an open coffin and had put a wig that Lisa chose for her open casket as the chemo had worked well enough to take her beautiful head of hair away. Another thing I can't fathom: choosing your own funeral look at this age.

The funeral was Wednesday. Jason was a pall bearer and told me in the ride up that Catholic tradition is that the pall bearers are the messengers and that they should have a hand on the casket at all times possible until the priest has duly sent the soul up to heaven. I'm not a religious person, at all, but I thought that was particularly poetic in a time like this.

I've been to a couple Catholic wedding ceremonies but never to a Catholic funeral mass. There was much more singing in grief than there is in celebration. I hope the pomp and circumstance of it all comforted Lisa's parents - I found it to be entertaining in those moments when I forgot why we were there. I found the incense swung over the casket to be cloying and not unpleasant. And in the end, I cried. And cried. And cried. I cried quite a lot last week. As did so many others.

I took away from it all: Love and mortality. Both are bound to get ya. Hopefully with several decades between them.

Much love, Lisa.

My My My ... How Times Change

Killing some time, waiting for a vendor to show up at one of our satellites. Decide to look up Flunk Day to see if there are any rumors pages I can access and stumble upon The Knox Student website. TKS is a weekly student newspaper for Knox College. They had a couple of articles about Flunk Day but nothing with a link to rumors.

So I clicked around and started reading other articles and came across one entitled ,a href='http://www.theknoxstudent.com/newsroom/article/all-plugged-knoxs-laptop-controversy/'>"All Plugged In: On Knox's Laptop Controversy". My interest piqued, I clicked through.

First off, I was shocked there is a controversy. I thought it was a bygone conclusion that laptops are everywhere and thus belong everywhere. I know in my day, laptops didn't even exist. But then again, neither did color monitors. And our printers were very, very loud. When I went off to college, my dad asked me if I wanted him to buy me a computer for school and it being 1989, I said no thanks, Dad. I'll get a word processor - that's all I need. And I was right. With the exception of a stupid Apple computer that corrupted my floppy disk right before senior finals, I rarely used much more than my word processor.

Had I been born 10 years later and entered Knox the fall of 1999, my answer would have been different, although I doubt the question would have even been asked. By that point, more than likely, I would have gone through an entire junior high and high school career using a computer and my dad would have known that I expected to do the same in college. And by that point, I may have been gifted an IBM Thinkpad 600 with a 300 mHz processor and 5.1 GB of storage. And I would have been on the cutting edge with a machine like that.

When I was a student, the only way to take notes involved ink (or graphite) and paper. Professors spoke fast so it also involved copious amounts of unreadable scribbles stretching across the lined sheets in front of me. The process of going over those notes later for a test inevitably ended in headache.

It seems a little odd that Knox is having this controversy now. Laptops have been in students' hands for over a decade so I have no doubt they have been in the classrooms just as long. Why carry a 4oz notebook when you can haul a 6lb laptop from SMaC to CFA?

Of course, the answer is Facebook. And Twitter. And old fashioned email. “We’re starting to get a generation of students who have always been multitasking ... What a lot of students are weak on now is the ability to focus.” How times change. And how I stay the same. I have always had a problem with focusing - clearly, I was born 20 years too soon. I am of the wrong generation and now know why I have been unable to focus all my life. Facebook. Twitter. Email. It is apparent to me, I have been social networking in my head all of these years, waiting only for a machine that could provide an actual connection to real people rather than the imagined connections to no-doubt the pretend-people in my head. I am so thankful that it has finally caught up with me and given me a forum to truly be my multi-tasking, unfocused, inattentive self.

Thank you Bill Gates! And thank you, Facebook.