August 13, 2005

I�m writing this in a Starbucks in Southern California. It�s the only place you can get decent coffee in suburbia. Watching the busy intersection makes me miss San Francisco so much. The funny thing is that they�re having San Francisco weather down here. Overcast and cool for August. Meanwhile, the city I left was clear and bright. More signs of the coming weather apocalypse.

I�m here to visit my sick father, a life-long smoker, now dying of lung cancer. The house is so dark � all the blinds are drawn, little natural light comes in now. I can totally understand why some people say �fuck chemo� � my father is completely miserable, conscious of little except that his reality is confined to his bed, the bathroom, and the kitchen for a brief attempt at solid food. Drugs, Lomox for the diarrhea, morphine for the occasional pain, Xanax for the anxiety of not knowing if going through this will even make a difference.

My mother is keeping a constant bedside vigil now. He accidentally rolled out of bed in the middle of the night, and she�s trying to prevent that from happening again. She didn�t have the strength to lift him up, even though he�s lost so much weight. Fortunately, my brother only lives four blocks away, and he was able to come over to help lift him up and put him back in his bed.

My brother has his own problems. His wife is battling bone cancer in her femur. After a few rounds of radiation therapy she will have an MRI in September to see her if she�s improving. This morning he told me his daughter found a lump in her breast, and she�s only thirteen. What are the putting in the water over here?

Last night, my mother asked me how I could possibly want to live in San Francisco, since it�s so cold. It�s all relative, I guess. Chicago is much colder. It even snows. She�s never accepted that I really live there. It�s always been a temporary thing to her. Maybe now she realizes that she may be alone, sooner rather than later, and she�s scared.

We�re all scared of being alone. I had to face that reality a while back when V broke up with me. Now that I met R, it seems a little more remote, for now. In the end, we�re all alone. If my father passes on soon, and he just might, since he has no fight left in him, she needs to develop some kind of social network, or she may follow him, or so the statistics say. Unfortunately, it�s just not in her nature. She�s so anti-social, doesn�t trust other people outside of family. Maybe she�s on to something, but maybe she needs to take some chances.

Unfortunately, the fear drive is the primary life-force out here. She lives like a prisoner in her own house. Tons of locks on the door, the houses in this neighborhood are armed with security lights that turn on if anyone approaches private property. Watching the news in Los Angeles is like watching a private nightmare � home invasions, random violence, you�re constantly reminded that YOU ARE NOT SAFE.

And we�re not, but you can have all the security devices in the world, and it won�t stop someone from getting you, not if they really, really want to get to you. I remember once, a few months after 9-11, some friends and I were headed to a Giants game at Pac Bell Park. My friend, P, forgot he was carrying a small knife on him. He was a boy scout, and he�s carried a pocket knife in his pocket since he was a kid. It was too late to go back to the car, so I showed him how to get the knife pass the security staff. It was easy.

There�s no such thing as a perfect plan, or a perfect life. And all the preparation you can pull together won�t save you from something unexpected, like violence or cancer., The sooner we all learn that, the sooner we can start living.

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