I did not miss our most beautiful Spring

I wish I could have commemorated

it better; the season was very fine

in the Piedmont this year, and this

is less usual than legend would have

it. For the past 105 days, if you

have seen this page, you may know

that I've been under prescription

narcotic medication, every day with

no interruption, and I have been all

but completely unambulatory without

incurring great inconvenience. But

in the 'day room' by a side door to

this farm house, where I've concen-

trated an existence that I share with

my English dog, I am surrounded by

a couple of hundred square feet of

eastern, southern and western facing

windows, and have been able to sur-

vey changes in woods and pastures,

and a stream and an expansive pond

without complication by any other

structures. So if I have been com-

pressed, mentally and physically,

I have been blessed by the loyalest

society and the least pressing of

all circumstances with which to ob-

serve, and still to imbibe this

most refreshing of all natural ex-

periences. 

I have not been satisfied by the

blog's sharing of these advan-

tages, not to make too much of

them; but I have been able to

frame one or two postings of

greater clarity on a couple of

dilemmas which I had always

thought might never be expres-

sible. 

Yet a debt I anxiously feel

toward myself, and by extension

to the readers of this page, has

been very regrettably unpayable.

I refer to the photographic en-

gagement with this world which

I enjoy and admire so much in 

the contributions of others,

and gives such pleasure to me

to pursue. It is, I think, the

pleasure of the making of pic-

tures which rebukes, to some

extent, my complaint of "let-

ting down the side," when there

is no more than one side, if

you will. (Here is Ivan's cam-

era, and sometimes Valéry's,

in place of my own; how I do

owe them, too).

An adjustment of 20 degrees F

in our mid-afternoon temperatures

in the last couple of days, has

signalled a new season as if we

might not have heard. Such is the 

presumption of that season, where

we are, that it is seldom willing

to suggest a chilling of our wine

without harangue; if Spring is a

fresh-faced Lieutenant then Summer 

is a drill Sergeant here. It may

be that the oppressions of narcot-

ics have been a timely training

for the capsule of refrigeration 

in which we conduct our exis-

tence here, for more than a

season's fair share of the cal-

endar. I awoke this morning, with

such enhanced respect for these

oppressions that I cannot hesi-

tate to report of them to sustain,

for this entry, the page's re-

nown for poor taste.

I believe I have now caught a

rather panoramic glimpse of the

psychosis of narcotic captivity,

and it came to me very hard this

morning as I drew my first waking

breaths, in daylight, which is

already suspiciously late for me.

I will tell you, bluntly, I am

frightened, I am scared, I feel

saddled by an enormous, suffocat-

ing weight. I can attribute this

novel orientation to nothing in

my experience but this sustained

regime of narcotic consumption.

Very great pain and confusion

have been replaced by terror,

not the heir one bargained for,

of going to sleep, itself.

I have known, I do not have

my body. I have written about

learning that I do not have

my mind. But I did not know

until this day, I do not have

my own breath. This, I must

admit, is enough to give

Summer a run for its money

in aggression, and cast a

pall against complaint with

my imagery of healthy people.

Who knew, we could be offend-

ed by fear we couldn't anatom-

ise, couldn't limn in blithe

genealogy? 

I awoke with unprecedented short-

ness of breath, and it shortened,

of course, as one groped to ac-

count for it. I submitted to a

feeling of envelopment in an iron-

fisted grip, which I did then as-

cribe to my narcotics - dilaudid,

oxycodone in a couple of variations,

gabupentin, scads of tylenol, not to

mention the intravenous delights in

hospital which opened the space for

them. I had a physical sense of be-

ing subject to a formidable dictator-

ship, a squashing of hope, and a

feeling of smothering in my pillows

came over me as I lifted up, in new

pain at my incision. My body was the

Summer drill sergeant, demanding I

obey with drugs. A panic of drowning,

a sense of asphyxiation never known

to me before, lifted me angrily to

the pharmaceutically laden table 

across the room, abjuring my own 

dog's affectionate greetings.

I can lodge this report at this 

date on the calendar because I am

grateful to have seen the threat to

which I am exposed: a somewhat ill-

balanced regime of post-operative

treatments, I can redesign with my

surgeons when I meet with them on 

Monday. And I will. It is unseem-

ly of one to complain of a modest

tilt off-center, in a standard of

care which I still regard as in-

formed and diligent. I would rath-

er complain of Summer, and I'm not 

about to minimise it.