Here's a poem Carolyn wrote more recently

A Maiden's Lament

=== By Carolyn Farkas ===

It isn't fair.

I'd heard rumors of his plight,

His Royal Frogness.

I hiked all week, scrambling over rocks painted with slime,

Clambering over fallen trees,

Pulling off well-fed leeches,

Vomiting lichens and praying that the mushrooms would not kill,

Pondering my choice—mud-packed skin or mosquito bites?

All this to save him.

At last I reached the Doleful Swamp,

Worst land of all,

Snakes dripping from moldering trees,

Beetles beneath every leaf,

Scurrying creatures which I dared not seek,

A stench I thought would kill.

Careful footsteps,

Short breaths,

Tears streaming.

And then I saw him.

Forlorn upon a drifting log,

Squatting with squads of frogs around,

His toad-servants on the pond-bank

Croaking a valediction to the prince.

By his wealth I knew him,

His sceptre resting on a mossy log,

His diadem askew but shining.

The crown had shrunk just as the person had,

Now sized for the green forehead of a frog,

The gold contracted,

Tubies once the size of peaches, now of peas,

But so handsome, so regal, so I thought,

At least no warts (Thank God he's not a toad.).

He wanted to speak, but with his mouth still full of fly,

And so I kissed him, as I had been told to do.

Then, TRANSFORMATION.

The earth shook, fog swirled,

The pond scented vaguely, now, of lotus.






Then, there, before my eyes

(So far, so good; the stories were not lies)

The handsome prince.

Golden hair to match the medals on his chest,

His silken garments, out of style, but with such sheen,

His crown and scepter now a regal size.

Just as I'd dreamt him.

Tenderly he kissed me, only once, upon my disheveled hair.

"Oh, thank you, dear. It's so dull, being a frog.

My only sport—the hunt.

But no prancing stallions chasing deer,

Just myself, flicking my tongue at slow-paced gnats,

Or worse, the prey of cranes longing for lunch.

"And now there's your reward,

Eight hundred golden ducats,

Well, call it an even thousand if you'll show me the path to home,

From Doleful Swamp to the nearest of my castles."

"What about marriage?

Surely that's the right thing to do."

I tried to sound so shy,

The demure virgin who'd rescued her true love.

"The right thing to do?

My dear, why that?

Money should suffice.

Gold is its own reward,

And if you're pregnant,

The tadpole isn't mine.

Don't you suggest it.

No!

Think about it.

Marriage?

Surely you jest.

Not in the job specs.

I've heard the tales myself.

That happily-ever-after bit's unclear.

The frog ends up as a prince, and they live happily ever after.

Perhaps she's happy with the cash:

He's happy getting back to throne and realm.

But there's no marriage.

"Besides, you see, there's this girl I met last year,

A week before my frogging.

Well, actually, she's the witch who did all this.

A lover's spat. It happens.

Surely we'll work it out,

And she's a beauty.

Enchanting."

"She didn't rescue you. I did. Don't I get preference?"

"I see your point.

It makes a kind of sense.

That kiss I gave was nice, but passion wasn't there.

Anyway, I'm a prince.

I suppose a commoner might be my wife,

But I like my women clean.

No mosquito bites, no scratches, no smell of puke,

Not layered with mud,

And certainly not the sort who'd kiss a frog,

No matter who she thought the frog might be."

"You've eaten flies."

"Now that's unkind.

I had no choice. Stag-beetle stew or starve.

But you chose to kiss me.

You tasted of mushrooms, lichens, and so much else.

A tongue that licked toad will never touch mine.

Marriage?

Not even shacking up.

Princes don't do shacks.

"Be honest.

Would you have come

If I had been a peasant or a serf?

Remember—a thousand ducats.

That's quite enough

To buy a handsome farmer

If you buy the farm.

You'll get your man, one used to mud and muck,

And I will find my bewitching, noble love.

Now let's be going.

And we'll all live happily ever....

Well, you know how the ending ought to be. "

But I begged him.

"Just kiss me once on the mouth,

Just once,

While I hold your crown and sceptre,

While I pretend to be royal.

Then, if no, then no.

Though I have my expectations."

And so I kissed him, as I had been told to do.

Then, TRANSFORMATION.

The earth shook, fog swirled,

The pond scented vaguely, now, of muck.

Then, there, before my eyes

(So far, so good, the stories were not lies)

The handsome frog.

Well, not so handsome, even for a frog,

Without his crown or sceptre.

They sold for quite a price. And now my mansion

High on this mountain

Overlooks the Doleful Swamp

But at a distance.

My farms expand as we drain the swamp.

My beauty products help peasants and queens alike,

Especially the mud packs.

I need only smile, relax,

Rest on velvet sheets,

Wear silken dresses,

Dine on caviar and frog legs.

(Perhaps, one of these days....)

And I’ll live happily ever....

Well, as he said, you know how the ending ought to be.

Here's a poem Carolyn wrote about ten years ago.

Hair

by Carolyn Farkas

I’ve watched my hair grow long, the last ten years,

too long for someone well past middle age.

For birthdays, anniversaries, such events,

the beautician who smooths my twisted curls

suggest some style that would be simpler, shorter, right,

easy to live with,

and I must answer.

How should I decline?

I pause, as though I listened to her thought,

then speak “No, not today.

Just trim uneven ends,

but leave me long for now.

I must hurry. So much to do.”

How can I tell her that I need to see its length,

each time I shower,

that moment when it snakes down my neck,

crawls to my chest

and covers the decade-old scar on my left breast,

reminder of what once made me lose my hair

but let me keep it now,

for so long, so long.

Writing/Cancer Support Group 6/16/10

Assignment:

What is the greatest source of frustration about your health?
=================================
Mortality

They say that getting old is better than the alternative. It’s also worse. It depends on whether you consider the alternative as dying or just staying young. Ten years ago, my brother mentioned to me that he’d heard that we were in the last generation that was actually going to die. I pooh-poohed the notion back then. These days, with stem cell research and regenerative medicine research making breakthroughs very often, I’m not so sure he was completely wrong. It might be that it’ll take another generation to get to where most degenerative diseases can be reversed, but there’s a chance it could happen.

It’s not unknown to have virtual immortality in biological species. There’s a kind of jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula, that’s immortal in the sense that after achieving sexual maturity and reproducing, it changes itself back into a juvenile form and then goes through the maturation process again. In the presence of sufficient food, it doesn’t die.

Of course, in a species like people, you might not want to go through adolescence, and have to attend high school, again unless you were a jock and high school was the best time of your life. If you're like most of us, you'd want to keep your knowledge and experience, something jellyfish don’t have to deal with as far as we know. So I can envision a whole generation of Doogie Howsers once this immortality thing gets going. It’ll be cute.

This one's from Carolyn

A few years ago, my wife, Carolyn, wrote a poem that's a spoof of several poems we all read in high school. I was going through some old emails and came across it.

Here it is.

Henry

=========================================================

Annabel Lee Muller and Sam "Judge" McGee: A Romance of the Frozen North

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold;

It was many and many a year ago, In Alaska by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know, By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge She cremated Sam McGee.

He was a child and she was a child, In Alaska by the sea;
But they loved with a love that was more than love-He and his Annabel Lee;

There’s the wonderful love of a beautiful maid,
And the love of a staunch true man,
And the love of a baby that’s unafraid—
All have existed since time began.
But the most wonderful love, the Love of all loves,
Even greater than the love for Mother,
Is the infinite, tenderest, passionate love
Of one dead drunk for another.

And ere the languid summer died,

Sweet Ann became McGee's bride.

But on the day that they were mated,

Ann's brother Bob was intoxicated;

And Ann's relations, twelve in all,

Were very drunk in the barroom hall.

And when the summer came again,

The young bride bore him babies twain;

Sam thought of the twins, and wished that they

Looked less like the men who raked the hay.

And there be women fair as she,

Whose verbs and nouns do more agree.

So Sam soon thought his Ann a whore,

And she thought him a weak-willed bore.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

And this was the reason that, long ago, In Alaska by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling handsome Sam Mcgee;

And that very night, as they lay packed tight in their robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to her, and “Hon,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking you, don’t refuse my last request.”



Well, he seemed so low that she couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ‘taint being dead--it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and she hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that she couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on she went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
And the trail was bad, and she felt half mad, but she swore she would not give in;
Still, she had to eat, and he was fresh meat, and she hearkened with a grin.

Some planks she tore from the cabin floor, and she lit the boiler fire;
Some coal she found that was lying around, and she heaped the fuel higher;
Then she made a hike, for she didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.

Ann was sick with dread, but she bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep in there.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked; since I'd like him medium rare.

But the winds did howl, And Ann ran afoul, of his sister, proud and cold,

"She's like Alferd Packer! We all must attack her!" Sis said, vain of her rank and gold.

So that his highborn kinsmen came and bore away Annabel Lee

To shut her up in a prison cell in the penitentiary.

But Ann's love it was stronger by far than the guards of the prison by the sea

And the moon never beamed without bringing her dreams of her taste for Sam Mcgee,

So she looked at the stars and then broke through the bars of Nome's penitentiary. The Dawson Trail she dashes and returns to the ashes of her lover Sam Mcgee,

And the stars never rise but she tastes the bright eyes of delicious Sam Mcgee

And so, all the night-tide, she lies down by his side In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In his tomb by the sounding sea.


God pity them both and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

If, of all words of tongue and pen,

The saddest are, "It might have been,"

More sad are these we daily see:

"It is, but hadn't ought to be."

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

by Carolyn Farkas, Bret Harte, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Service, John Greenleaf Whittier, and, of course, Anonymous)

The rainbow story

Our house in Elkton, MD, the place where Carolyn and I lived for most of out adult lives, and where we raised out children, is in the north east corner of Maryland. There were days when it rained in the afternoon and then stopped in the late afternoon. On those days, there would be a rainbow. The way rainbows work, they're always on the opposite side of you from where the sun is located, and in the late afternoon, the sun, at least in Elkton, and probably in the entire northern hemisphere, is located southwest of your location. That means the rainbow is located northeast of your location.

Carolyn would load the kids in the car and tell them they were going to look for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. After the first time, the kids kind of knew that they'd never find a pot of gold, but there were scenic little country roads swirling between woods, farms, and horse ranches that led northeast to a friendly little ice cream store. That store was at the end of the rainbow.

Writing/Cancer Support Group 6/9/10 Topic: Fear

The Fear

My son-in-law, Chris Angel (nope, not Criss Angel, the magician you've heard of, Chris Angel, the movie director you've never heard of) has directed five movies. The first one was, "The Fear: Halloween Night." In that movie, a group of young adults decide to confront their deepest fears. Naturally, they head into the woods, to a remote cabin far from phones and roads where, by a happenstance that turns out not to be pure chance, there's a supernatural serial killer named Morty on the loose. That turned out to be an unwise way to confront their fears. Really unwise. It really takes the dignity out of death when you're killed by a thing named Morty.

I confront my fears differently. Frankly, when I came down with cancer, I wasn't as afraid as I thought I might be. I'm a hospice doc so I'm well aware of the discomfort that can attend end stage cancer, but I'm also aware that there are good techniques for alleviating suffering at the end of life. It's not death that's scary. Anyone can be dead, and, eventually, all of us will be. It's the process of dying that can be scary and messy.

I've been free of any sign of cancer for about a year and three quarters. It took a year and a half since my initial cancer surgery for my recurrence of cancer to show up. I'm scheduled for a follow up scan tomorrow. Wish me luck. If I pass the test tomorrow, I can put off my fear for six months before I'll even need another scan.

Writing/Cancer Support 6/8/10 -- Control

Control
What am I in control of, and what am I not in control of?

What do I want to change?


The main thing I'm not in control of is whether or not my cancer is going to come back. That affects my long term plans. Actually, I don't have any long term plans right now because I feel like those gladiators in ancient Rome. You know, "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die."



Back in February, my oncologist told me that he'd have to decrease the frequency of my follow up scans because I might be cured, and, if I am, he doesn't want to cause me to come down with a new cancer caused by the radiation from all the scans. Initially, I got frequent scans on the theory, I suppose, that I was going to die anyway from the cancer so I wouldn't have time to develop any new cancers from all the radiation. The docs tend to think that way when a patient has recurrent lung cancer that has upstaged itself to stage IV.


I'm scheduled for a new scan the day after tomorrow. If I pass that one, it'll be more than a year and a half from the time I had my last cancer treatment. The last time my cancer recurred, it was approximately a year and a half after my surgery.


I'm trying to remain optimistic. I go out on long walks, eat less than I used to eat, and drink Kefir, a pro-biotic drink that's supposed to improve the immune system. I think Kefir is just a foreign sounding name that lets the company charge more for a bottle of the stuff than they could charge if they called it buttermilk. But it tastes suspiciously like buttermilk.

Control in the past six months or so has involved going to lots of Wellness Community activities. You have to be a cancer survivor to join The Wellness Community. But, now, control is finding other activities, not cancer related, to enjoy. On Thursday evening, I'm going to join the Tinseltown Toastmasters, a chapter of Toastmasters International. I've always known there was an organization called Toastmasters, but I could never figure out why someone would have to join an organization just to learn how to make a toast. I don't hang out in bars very much anyway so the opportunity to make a toast doesn't come up that often, and, when it does, I just raise my glass and say, "L'chaim." Non-Jews can't even say that unless they're devotees of "Fiddler on the Roof." But for me, it's not hard to make a toast. I found out recently that there's more to being in Toastmasters than just making a toast. It's about public speaking. I like to talk so I'm sure I'll have fun. And there's no requirement that you have to have a fatal disease to join the club.

When my wife was alive, we used to take long car trips—sometimes several months at a time. We were like those retired couples who sell their houses, buy recreational vehicles, and travel the country without any fixed address. Except we didn't sell our house, and we traveled in a Prius. That gave us way better gas mileage than those gas-hog RVs. And sleeping in a motel is just as comfortable as sleeping in an RV.

I haven't done that since Carolyn died, but I'm planning to—this summer. Control.

Control

Control
What am I in control of, and what am I not in control of?

What do I want to change?


The main thing I'm not in control of is whether or not my cancer is going to come back. That affects my long term plans. Actually, I don't have any long term plans right now because I feel like those gladiators in ancient Rome. You know, "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die."



Back in February, my oncologist told me that he'd have to decrease the frequency of my follow up scans because I might be cured, and, if I am, he doesn't want to cause me to come down with a new cancer caused by the radiation from all the scans. Initially, I got frequent scans on the theory, I suppose, that I was going to die anyway from the cancer so I wouldn't have time to develop any new cancers from all the radiation. The docs tend to think that way when a patient has recurrent lung cancer that has upstaged itself to stage IV.


I'm scheduled for a new scan the day after tomorrow. If I pass that one, it'll be more than a year and a half from the time I had my last cancer treatment. The last time my cancer recurred, it was approximately a year and a half after my surgery.


I'm trying to remain optimistic. I go out on long walks, eat less than I used to eat, and drink Kefir, a pro-biotic drink that's supposed to improve the immune system. I think Kefir is just a foreign sounding name that lets the company charge more for a bottle of the stuff than they could charge if they called it buttermilk. But it tastes suspiciously like buttermilk.

Control in the past six months or so has involved going to lots of Wellness Community activities. You have to be a cancer survivor to join The Wellness Community. But, now, control is finding other activities, not cancer related, to enjoy. On Thursday evening, I'm going to join the Tinseltown Toastmasters, a chapter of Toastmasters International. I've always known there was an organization called Toastmasters, but I could never figure out why someone would have to join an organization just to learn how to make a toast. I don't hang out in bars very much anyway so the opportunity to make a toast doesn't come up that often, and, when it does, I just raise my glass and say, "L'chaim." Non-Jews can't even say that unless they're devotees of "Fiddler on the Roof." But for me, it's not hard to make a toast. I found out recently that there's more to being in Toastmasters than just making a toast. It's about public speaking. I like to talk so I'm sure I'll have fun. And there's no requirement that you have to have a fatal disease to join the club.

When my wife was alive, we used to take long car trips—sometimes several months at a time. We were like those retired couples who sell their houses, buy recreational vehicles, and travel the country without any fixed address. Except we didn't sell our house, and we traveled in a Prius. That gave us way better gas mileage than those gas-hog RVs. And sleeping in a motel is just as comfortable as sleeping in an RV.

I haven't done that since Carolyn died, but I'm planning to—this summer. Control.