When my mom was still alive, I continued scheduling all annual checkups in San Antonio to visit family and friends. I'd make my appointments on Friday's and stay for the weekend. Besides, I really loved my GYN. She and I were roughly the same age. She was brilliant but easy-going--like a friend more than a doctor.
During this time, one of George's buddies from high school to adulthood was diagnosed with the most deadly form of brain cancer in his early 40's. I remember mentioning the diagnosis to my GYN, acquainted with hope but also a practitioner of science. The good doctor and even better friend gently told me of a very bleak prognosis.
There wasn't going to be any spontaneous healing from Heaven. Regardless of the heartfelt circle of prayers, this particular type of CANCER would eventually prevail. "One-hundred-million miracles" don't always happen every day after all.
Then again thanks to medical advances, there were some plateaus. Our friend continued to enjoy life until he was gone. Fading into the distance as we said our goodbyes, he was off on another journey.
"Castroville is a small town with a rich cultural heritage nestled in the Medina River Valley just 20 miles west of San Antonio. Known as “The Little Alsace of Texas” Castroville was founded in 1844 by Henri Castro, for whom the town is named. The first European emigrant settlers in this area were mostly Catholic farmers from Alsace, a region of France, brought over to fulfill Castro’s contract to colonize vacant Texas Land. Calling themselves Alsatians, they were mostly of German decent, speaking a dialect of German....
Mostly a farming community in the early days, the city of over 3,000 people now boasts agriculture, civic, commercial and industrial advancements. Castroville still has strong cultural ties to Alsace as many of its citizens are descendents of the original settlers who journeyed here from Alsace in 1844. It’s the home to many who can trace their ancestry back to their sister city, Eguisheim, Alsace,France...,"
"...It's possible that my biggest act of disobedience has consistently, since I was an adolescent, been against the idea that all truth comes from books, really other people's books. I hate the fact that whatever I say or write, someone reading or listening will try to find something out of their reading I "sound like." 'You sound just like...,' 'you remind me of...,' 'have you read...?' I read all the time and I often believe what I read while I'm reading it, especially if it's some trashy story; intense involvement in theories as well as stories seems difficult without temporary belief, but then it burns out. I've been trying to train myself for thirty or forty years not to believe anything anyone tells me...." "...It's necessary to maintain a state of disobedience against...everything. One must remain somehow, though how, open to any subject or form in principle, open to the possibility of liking, open to the possibility of using. I try to maintain no continuous restrictions in my poetics except with regard to particular works, since writing at all means making some sort of choices. But NO DOCTRINES. Rather I tend to maintain a sense that a particular form or set of rules at a certain point might serve me for a while.
Like many writers I feel ambivalent about words, I know they don't work, I know they aren't it. I don't in the least feel that everything is language. I have a sense that there has been language from the beginning, that it isn't fundamentally an invention. These are contradictory positions but positions are just words.
I don't believe that the best poems are just words, I think they're the same as reality; I tend to think reality is poetry, and that it isn't words. But words are one way to get at reality/poetry, what we're in all the time. I think words are among us and everywhere else, mingling, fusing with, backing off from us and everything else...,""The Poetics of Disobedience, " Alice Notley, Poetry Foundation Essay on Poetic Theory .
No one's serious at seventeen. --On beautiful nights when beer and lemonade And loud, blinding cafés are the last thing you need --You stroll beneath green lindens on the promenade.
Lindens smell fine on fine June nights! Sometimes the air is so sweet that you close your eyes; The wind brings sounds--the town is near-- And carries scents of vineyards and beer. . .
II.
--Over there, framed by a branch You can see a little patch of dark blue Stung by a sinister star that fades With faint quiverings, so small and white. . .
June nights! Seventeen!--Drink it in. Sap is champagne, it goes to your head. . . The mind wanders, you feel a kiss On your lips, quivering like a living thing. . .
III.
The wild heart Crusoes through a thousand novels --And when a young girl walks alluringly Through a streetlamp's pale light, beneath the ominous shadow Of her father's starched collar. . .
Because as she passes by, boot heels tapping, She turns on a dime, eyes wide, Finding you too sweet to resist. . . --And cavatinas die on your lips.
IV.
You're in love. Off the market till August. You're in love.--Your sonnets make Her laugh. Your friends are gone, you're bad news. --Then, one night, your beloved, writes. . .!
That night. . .you return to the blinding cafés; You order beer or lemonade. . . --No one's serious at seventeen When lindens line the promenade.
