Groupon, groupoff: so much for that eyelash perm

In this day and age, well past the dawning of Web 2.0 and nearly, I suspect, near its sunset, many, many entities want to sign me up to spend more money. Their premise? Since we have such a large buying group, it's a bargain.

Oh, really?

Explain to me, please, why on earth I would purchase a Japanese eyelash perm, at any price, for any reason. I understand the Japanese are known for straight hair. I get it: I sent hair straightener for black woman to Dona, the year she lived in Japan. Not a lot of African-American or Caribbean-American women in Tokyo circa 1985, before the multi-culti globalization of our little world.

If Japanese women were curling their eyelashes, they probably did it the old-fashioned way: with the type of metal eyelash crimper last seen by me circa 1970, when my bunk counselor -- at an all-girls' camp -- persisted in doing full makeup every morning.

In retrospect, who was the counselor primping for? Not the other female counselors, not circa 1970, when bras were flung with abandon, underarm hair and unshaven legs were a political statement, and the word "femme" had yet to come into popular usage. (Even now, it's only used in certain circles, and I'm not quite sure I understand the complete definition, or if it varies, city by city, urban by rural.) I'll never know, except to chalk it up to pre-feminist cultural conditioning.

But I digress: before chemo, I might not have realized that the everything-must-go sale my hair follicles staged was complete, and I would not have grasped the full extent of the loss-of-hair. It never would have occurred to me that my eye lashes were lacking.

(Yea, you -- tell me my hair will grow back and I will ask you if you've ever seen your pubic hair on a wad of toilet paper.) It does grow -- but not back -- it grows in textures and levels of curliness not found on any head of mine I ever brushed. My eyelashes hold mascara now just as well as years ago.

When my hair, now 3 inches in length, started its regrowth, it was not the hair I had cut off in the ponytail to donate to other women with cancer. That hair was thick, and long. I don't recognize myself as the woman in the mirror with short, curly, hair. She looks too old to be me.

That may be the woman I have become, but I've yet to adapt to her, the one with a scar down her chest where the surgeon opened her sternum, and the one whose other incision, now healing, came from inserting and removing the quarter-size port under her skin, at a level just above where my cleavage, such as it remains, happens to be. That, and having been a Superfund site for several months. Do the poisons ever leave?

Here is where I step sharply on "groupoff." I missed the day when my email bargain-getter sent trampoline lessons on sale. Groupon? Middle-aged women in circus school? In Brooklyn, on a street name I recognize from my childhood in the 'burbs, but not directly over the East River? Not part of any group that I can imagine, not without an ambulance and an orthopedist nearby.

If you're of an age to try the tramp or flying on wires, perhaps you have not reached the age where you understand the repercussions of signing a waiver of responsibility. Or, no one has texted the legality (or lack) of the form to you. Or you are one of the various lemmings comprising the group for which these "bargains" are targeted.

In high school, I loved the tramp (not the dirty little man outside the gym). But not now, in what I assume to be the midpoint of my life. No sane person wants me, veering on osteoporosis, to hop up on that tramp to jump and fly. My bones might not make it through intact, for one reason; another, bigger question: could I ever feel as free jumping now as I did at 14, when fear was not a part of my physical makeup? I'm guessing, not so much.

"Freedom's just another word for, nothing left to lose," or so sang Janis Joplin, at the ripe old age of 25 or so. Apparently it look me longer to lose my water-wings and training wheels. Twice as long, to be precise.

Having stepped over the medical threshold into the land of illness, of temporary disability, some of my fears have grown, but others? Not so much. Sure, there's the State Department. I hear it has issued a warning on travel to Mexico.

I'm sure there was one on Haiti, at least part of the time I was there. It didn't occur to me to be afraid. And Mexico? Border drug trafficking is not happening 1000 miles from the California state line. Where I stay in Baja, the only drugs on special are Viagra, anti-depressants, and Retin A. Each is freely available in pharmacies. I'm not even fearful of germs -- 20 years of visiting Haiti, and I know what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. (Cf. Superfund site).

My friends confuse the border with Cabos, 1000 miles down the peninsula. In timeshare-ville, guards blend in with the scenery, but I know they are there, just as I knew the staff paced the grounds in the Haitian beach where I went from girl child to grown woman.

Americans, except in war zones and potential political hotbeds (find me a dictator the U.S. didn't fly out of his country in the past 25 years, and I'll show you a dead man), didn't used to need private security protection. Now that we've globalized, U.S. citizens are easy targets.

Especially targeted are those those who give rise to the ugly American stereotype, one I've discovered is not without those secured to it, the ones who don't give a damn that, hey, no one speaks English here and speaking louder is not going to change that.

Volume is not the key to language comprehension, much to the chagrin of many. (Take that, groupon, and go global.) Hand signals are much more effective. In moments of desperation, you will get your point across -- perhaps not in a grammatical sentence, but in the way you most need at that very second.

Or so I continue to trust, as my attempts to learn Spanish (where is that group discount when you need it?) regress, and fluent French dating back 30+ years spews forth in in its place.

Why such an emphasis on group discounts in the cyber age? Because no one would ever leave the keyboard, the cell phone, the "smart" phone, or the PDA? Makes me think the Internet is not where we find each other; it's where our connections fray, and, if you're not careful, lose all meaning.

Groupon? Is this for 21st century groupies? If you're offering discounts, perhaps you or your oh-so-clever computer, could devise a few not designed to add to a woman's insecurities. Don't try to make me think my eyelashes are doomed, the way the teeth-whitening crowd has tried to convince me to add that task to daily maintenance. It's not working.

If that's groupon, stop the world -- I want to groupoff.

Playing above the grass

From an article in The New York Times, this resonates with me: "Thomas R. Cole, author of a cultural history of aging, said he hailed anyone who, borrowing a phrase from his mother, age 85, 'is playing above the grass.' ”

What better way to put it? The ultimate division in life stages in five words. Far less of a cliche than keeping your head above water. Biggest problem is for those of us who never thought we would, regardless of circumstances, live to see past our 30th, 35th, or 36 birthdays. It's 15 years on now, and I hadn't anticipated this longevity.

Neither had several of my friends (a commonality I never expected to be growing each time I mention it). Thing is, we all forgot to plan. Live past 35? Really? From the age of 17, I somehow conjectured that twice that age would be about as good as it would get.

It seems I gravely miscalculated. Post-chemo, the miscalculation is all the more vivid. What has proved to be dead-on, though, is that about the time I was turning 35, the world I had known was becoming more and more lost and the world as it has come to be has taken over. Hey, I was an English major.

Apart from being the first family on the block to have a microwave; play Pong with the TV set sporting a green-on-black display; own a VCR old enough to record the original not-ready-for-prime-time SNL gang; and possess a home fax machine -- the better to see each week's football spreads, technology and I have not been fast friends.

Sure, the first computer moved in in 1985 -- and I've been editing on computer almost since my work life began -- but, honestly, I preferred it back in the day when I didn't feel electronics had showed my brain the door. I like to be smarter than the machines with which I'm involved.

The longer I play above the grass, the less likely it seems I have any interest in keeping up with the latest widgetry. The user-friendly concept and I seem to have had a falling out. I want my computer to be like a car: when I was 16, I could drive one just fine, and for the most part, nothing has changed on the dashboard to change that.

That's more than 30 years in real time. Thirty years in computer land is another story. While I can still operate the original computer, which had the best word processing software I've ever encountered, all the latest twists and wrinkles leave me cold.

It's a brave new world out there, and somehow, I forgot to prepare for it.

Nearly bald soprano passes her PET scan

Atop my head is peach fuzz, getting longer by the day. Chemo is gone from my body and my datebook, as are almost daily visits to the doctor for blood counts. Best of all, the PET scan did not light up anywhere.

So, I'm officially on the road to recovery. It's a slow one, involving a great deal of sleep. Fortunately, sleep is my forte. You might even call it a vocation. Closer still, my true calling in life is as a sleeper. Twelve hours a day? No problem.

Oh, you wanted me awake and coherent? At what hour? Whatever the hour, you can never be sure of how cogent I'll be. I have been known to converse with people -- real, live ones standing next to my bed -- without regaining consciousness. Unconscious telephone calls? Been there, done that.

What are my plans, now that I've been blessed by the medical academy? My plan is not to plan, not now. I have just come through months when planning anything wasn't possible, and, given the strength of chemo fatigue, I don't think this state of affairs will change for a while.

It is interesting, to be in my fiftieth year and once again, have no clue what I am going to do with my life. Ideas float around, one or two in particular, but the execution of them in real life, well, that may take some doing.

I've got the time now, to think -- or not, depending on the day. And blogging? Not so much. Too much focus required, at least at the moment. Yet it's comforting to know, when I'm ready, my blog will be waiting.

Tie a colored ribbon...cut off your circulation

In case you were wondering what to get me while I'm sick, here's a list of links to things I do not want: No T-shirts, no mugs, no hats, no pins, no rubber bracelets. I don't need words on my chest to tell the world that cancer sucks. This is not exactly breaking news, folks.

Pick a ribbon, any ribbon, and choke on it. When my friend Dona was dying, the last thing she wanted to see was any item marketed in the pink ribbon factory. What she wanted to do was strangle the next person who showed up with one of those in-solidarity ribbons.

Meanwhile, the Web sites below have conflicting colors: is lymphoma lime green or is it red? Remember when red was AIDS awareness? Apart from Tony Orlando's song, that was the first ribbon, the one that wasn't commercialized -- and now, it isn't even listed as a disease.

http://www.choosehope.com/category/by-cancer-color-cancer-type

http://www.personalizedcause.com/shop/index.html

http://www.trinitylondon.com/awareness-ribbon-meanings.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awareness_ribbons

If there's an illness, or some other life-event trauma, the ribbon people have you covered. My personal favorite is the lace ribbon for osteoporosis. If only it came in a thinner size than the others, to show not only the lack of bone density but the decrease in diameter of the bones, it would be just perfect.

What I'm really waiting for is the walk for osteoporosis. That's about the only disease for which walking is recommended to keep bones in strong working order.

Walk for breast cancer, lymphoma, AIDS: how does that help any cancer research? Just send in the damn check and stay home. Do something fun while you can -- before you go Googling the Internet to see which ribbon has your name on it.

The marketing people have gone overboard on this theme. They started out on Prednisone, one of the components of my chemo, and moved up to the big stuff, the steroids that may not have made it to the house that [Babe] Ruth built -- Yankee Stadium, 1923 -- but are probably common in the bloodstream of ball players who compete in its replacement, opened last year.

Tomorrow is opening day for major league baseball. I don't know how I came upon this bit of useless information, but all it means to me is there's another place I can't go, in my immunocompromised state.

No stadiums for me, no matter who build them or who decided that naming the Met's new stadium "Citifield" was a good idea. Last week I read that the Feds not only own more than 25% of the bank stock, but it will be sold this at an what would be an $8 billion profit today.

That's TARP for you -- your tax dollars at work. Wonder if the U.S. government had a stake in how the Mets play?

I don't know what color ribbon goes with bank-in-distress, but if it's green, I'll bet there are a number of bank execs around whose neck that ribbon would fit perfectly. Perhaps former bank execs -- someone must have gotten fired when the bank tanked, even if for window dressing.

Still, if you're looking for a few necks around which to tie ribbons, the bodies are probably available by name in The Wall Street Journal. Or, wait: do those ribbons come in necktie form?

Which is worse in our society? A broken banking system or no cure for cancer? Judging from how readily the U.S. bailed out the banks vs. how difficult it is to get funding from the N.I.H., it doesn't look like public health has a fighting chance.

Hairless at home

No one signs up for chemotherapy with any kind of informed consent. Why? Info is given on a need-t0-know basis, while my 5 minutes on Google gave me the questions I needed to ask.

Sure, they tell you about losing your hair -- right on schedule, it came out in tufts. There was enough hair in my wastebasket to build a bird's nest. No one says, this process will take a week or more. You will shed. You will think you are molting. You will be surprised at what hairs remain and which ones detach with ease.

Then, you go to Wigville for the actual wig fitting. Explanations for taping wig to head prove more complicated than my brain can process. On my head, wig feels like an imposter's hair. Name for wig? Cousin It. No gender required. Cousin It's relative is "ittle," a band of hair that requires a cap over it so as not to expose the skull.

I'm told I have a lovely scalp. I'm told Cousin It looks real. Personally, I can't imagine that anyone could have any other response. Just as with new babies, all of them are cute, even the ugly ones. When you are hairless, compliments take on a different slant.

Nausea is commonly mentioned as a side effect, although the question is posed, "are you nauseous?" and proper English calls for, "are you nauseated?" P.S.: One day after chemo does not a clean couple of weeks create. You may not be nauseated the day of or during -- but there's a two-week interval to follow, when any day could be the bad day.

It is, basically, a crap shoot, how each person will react to toxic chemicals "infused" into her body. Your mileage, it seems, may vary. That covers a lot of reactions, but still, what you think when you start and what you conclude after four hours attached to a needle attached to tubing that glides the toxins into your body is unpredictable. Every day is a surprise: some are just days of slow movement; others are filled with queasy hours.

Things I researched; things no one would have otherwise mentioned: peripheral neuropathy, possible mouth sores and strange chemical tastes in mouth. Will chemo slow down the healing of the surgical scars? What foods may I and may I not consume? Do I need someone else to discern the temperature of my bathwater? How germ free do I need to make my house? Should I just shower in Purell and call it a day?

Do I need distilled water for ice cubes? How do I know good white cells from bad ones? In high school, we had to dissect a frog, twice. Why couldn't someone have taught me, say, some human anatomy? Something to do with how our bodies work? Surely we could have passed on the damn frog.

This is not the brave new world I envisioned. It is, however, very much in line with the title of poet M. Wyrebek's book: Be Properly Scared. I read the poems when they were published: the story of M's life from age 16 and her diagnosis onward. She was someone I admired -- talented, pretty, smart, funny -- and her life cut short as the bad cells multiplied and won the battle.

I guess I am lucky: the odds are in my favor. What the exact numbers are, I don't know. Another factoid hidden from the hairless. Chemo is not an adventure for those who need situations clearly delineated. Clues don't get spelled out; clues bite you on the ass, and assume you'll recognize them as answers.

But watch me when I do engage in commerce with clerks who are idiots: I have no time for them, not that I ever did have much patience. What I have now is an answer for, could you wait a few minutes? Not today, not this week. The toxins running through my veins have me in their grip. I am in thrall to what will one day be considered as suitable to cure cancer as mercury once was to cure syphilis.

I pull off my cotton cap, show my scalp, and say, "No. Don't have the time. And unless you have cancer, you won't, don't, can't understand me, so lay off the platitudes." It may seem cruel, but if there is one time in my life when it truly is all about me, this is it. Everyone I know who has been on this cruel dance floor has traced the same choreography.

Lymphoma focuses what is left of the mind in a position sharper than its ever been before. The rest of the brain cells are off on a sojourn somewhere I can't find them. I have to cling to the ones that remain.

Has it been five years? Compare...

October 14, 2004

My blog and welcome to it

Why through a looking glass? Most people see the place I call home, the place I was born, the city where my great, great, great grandmother is buried, as one unlike any other. Many can't understand why I stay. I can't see that there is anywhere else to go.

Perhaps we do look at life differently here, or I do, which explains the looking glass: life mirrored, slightly askew. It's not how you might assume from TV, whether "reality based," i.e., news, or fictitious.

Today? It's the second anniversary of my having quit smoking, and of one of my closest college friends, then age 41, e-mailing to announce she had stage 4 breast cancer. It's the day after my mom's birthday; a week after my own.

Twenty-two years since I have moved to this block, twenty-two years with the same phone number, in the so-called real world, where my mind is prone to wander, and my synapses misfire with some consistency.

It is a strange world, when life's most intimate details are proclaimed in cyberspace -- but since I gave up cigarettes (without becoming an irritating "reformed smoker"), I need a hobby. More precisely, a place to talk to myself, and, I hope, to you, whomever you may be.

It is a challenge, to understand why smoking indoors has been outlawed here, when the average person who stands on the street will breathe in more carbon monoxide in 20 minutes than I would exhale in 200.

I get it -- that I am smaller than the average car, much less bus or truck, so it's easier to try to make me conform to a new social norm than to force the average driver to make an effort. (Car does beat pedestrian; bus beats car, and so on in the run-me-over sweepstakes.)

One caveat: despite or because of all the techno-changes since my brain was young enough to absorb them without forgetting what to eat for dinner, I remain technologically challenged. It wasn't my intention, but there's just TMI out there.

I realize I'm adding more, but no one ever said irony wasn't my strong suit -- it's one I wear well, one that escapes many people in many places, but its absence would be stranger here, particularly at this time in our political landscape, to put it politely.

October 14, 2009

Today? Life is different: I'm smoking again, despite or to spite local ordinances; my friend with breast cancer died on Halloween two years ago; and now the count is up to 27 years on the same block in Wonderland, with my synapses misfiring completely inconsistently.

The world has mostly gotten stranger. For example, we've endured The Big Awful, when the economy cratered, and we all said, "disposable income? It was nice knowing you." Welcome to Brave New World. And, "good-bye, privacy. Hello, Facebook."

On the other hand, five years ago, when I traveled, I pretended to be Canadian, and now I don't have to explain that I didn't vote for the idiot who has belatedly returned to his ranch with My Little Pony.

Back then I wasn't preparing to do battle with Cambridge health plans, my so-called insurance. Now, not only do I need surgery to remove a gland most associated with pubescent growth, I also need a D&C for post-menopausal bleeding (TMI? You bet. But I am still talking to myself here, and so it goes.)

It seems it is better to go under general anesthesia once than twice, and it only gets more complicated from there. One doctor -- the gland guy -- has privileges at hospital A; my other doctor, one of 25 years standing, has privileges at hospital B, 90 blocks south and right around the corner from my apartment.

Chances of their meeting in pre-op? Zero.

Chances of my finding two surgeons from two different hospital departments at the same institution who both take my crappy insurance AND want to tag-team each other in the OR? I don't think MasterCard makes a commercial for this one.

I may have stumbled upon an occasion for which even the most comprehensive electronic Hallmark equivalent doesn't make a greeting card. If anyone did, it would say,

"Sorry you need two surgeries to make sure you don't have cancer."

Inside it would read,

"But congratulations on growing your hair for the past 22 months so now it's long enough to donate to those who do."

Irony: it's not just a concept -- it's a way of life.

Out of work in America?

Statistics aren't what they seem: for example, Alice has no employer save herself. For a long time, she had a tidy little business as a financial planner. The hours were minimal; neither early rising nor heavy lifting were involved; smoking in the office was a matter of desire, not law; all her colleagues were virtual. It was a good life.

Then came The Big Awful, with the economy blown to smithereens, and financial planning clients in increasingly short supply, and Alice's interest in the subject, at least as a career, waning considerably. Once again comes the question: what are you going to do with the rest of your life?

See, Alice and some of her friends, those who play psychopharm roulette along with her, never expected to age beyond, say, 30 or 35. However we have, which leaves us with far more time in our lives than we had anticipated. What to do, what to do? The answers are not coming fast and furious.

Alice would like to be an unemployment statistic, but she has failed to consider one critical connection: first, Alice would have to be working, doing the 9 to 5 and receiving a weekly paycheck. You can't collect unemployment without having put in 20 weeks working for someone else.

Last time Alice was eligible for unemployment was 1990, after her last staff magazine gig collapsed. Since then, as a so-called sole proprietor, she hasn't paid a dime into NYS's unemployment coffers. Hence, she is not eligible to receive, though she is working just as little as those who are collecting.

In truth, Alice's vocational calling is sleep, a minimum of 10 hours a night, every night. Without slumber, she is not-ready-for-prime-time functioning. It's been close to 20 years since Alice commuted to an office, and all she really knows about workplaces is that overhead fluorescent lighting, sealed windows, and recirculating air would be major contributors to an increase in migraine headaches.

Thus, Alice would prefer the office come to her, not that she go to an office any more substantial than the one that doubles as her dining room. Comfort first is her rallying cry. Alas, to answer FB's eternal what's-on-your-mind question, by saying will work for food, health benefits, and a really nifty retirement plan does not, in this po-mo world, constitute an active job search.

Is it time for another career? Alice exited magazine editing shortly before the demise of the printed page; she is looking to exit careers that require her to dress in heels, a good dress, a blazer and pearls in order to have her body language say, trust me. I am a good planner; it's just that our Brave New World requires too many economic projections that may well not hold.

So, now what? Alice's skill sets are mostly 20th century. She is a creative thinker whose techno-knowledge acquisition seems to be on overload. It is all she can do to burp out 10 words in a single sentence to communicate on FB, where Alice has been summering. (She is betting FB will kill whatever remaining productivity U.S. workers have pretended to retain.)

What Alice would like to do, thankyouverymuch, is retire. More specifically, she would be just as happy not to work another day in her life if not for the financial fallout. Give her a free day, and she will fill it, or not, depending on her mood.

Particularly difficult is the segue between vacation proper and back-to-some-facsimile-of-work.

A week away with a friend's family on the north shore of Massachusetts makes Alice realize how much better off we were without cell phones, computers, PDAs and the like. We could actually get away, and, unless we are filled with an unhealthy sense of self-importance -- narcissism run wild -- we need some time untethered.

Ma Bell used to say "reach out and touch someone." She meant, pick up the telephone. Alice is all in favor of the telephone (never text Alice; while she can receive messages, she can't send them and doesn't want to learn how. Texting strikes Alice as the best way to ruin her thumb joints, already fussy, forever. Not going to happen.)

She also likes to receive letters via snail mail -- just something personal from time to time. A postcard or two would be nice. Even a personal email -- coming back from vacation, Alice was greeted with 250+ emails, most of which are deletable without thinking.

Yesterday's cyber headlines are like yesterday's newspapers of old: we used to say that yesterday's news is today's fish wrapping. Difference is, now the fish wrapping is words on a screen.

And stopping the email flood would mean trying to remember what is important to bring back into the inbox. This in itself would be more work than Alice deems necessary. She gets emails she never meant to sign up for, and can't figure out how to disengage.

If you want to go ask Alice, please keep the correspondence lively. If you have a job for Alice, please send particulars. Meanwhile, in Alice's mind, she is on vacation until after Labor Day. Not only does she want no heavy lifting in a job, she doesn't want her synapses to struggle either.

White Noise

One element in the waiting room of any psychiatrist, analyst, psychologist, clinical social worker, and the like that I've noticed in my 30+ years making the rounds of various shrinks has remained constant: the white noise machine.

The device never changes its look, purpose, or sound. It's an off-white-to-beige circular plastic item about six inches in diameter and four inches in height, tethered to the wall by the inevitable extension cord, generating the same reassuring whoosh.

Everything else about the venue differs: from shrink to shrink, whether in shared office space or solo in what is now considered a home office, and used to be called the den, has changed over time. Innumerable faces hold countless certifications, and my sister/fellow-patients wait to enter or exit the closed office. Waiting room magazines bear new titles, cover lines, and dates, and even the type of bulb in the table lamps has gone green.

Still, white noise is white noise is white noise, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein badly. No one has come along with explosive technology to change anything about the machine, and it serves its purpose just fine.

Alice likes that in an a machine, that consistency. You never need to reboot white noise, just unplug it and move it to the next electrical outlet for your convenience.

Then again, if Alice could reboot her head, to make the synapses and neurotransmitters move in the alignment they may have had when Alice was a baby, before all The Troubles with Alice started, when she was a child, she would try to advance her techno knowledge to do so.

Technology and Alice faded out as partners circa 2001. Prior to that, Alice, oddly enough, was on the cutting edge -- online since 1993 successfully (vs. the 1985 inability to be pure techno junkie with the 300 baud modem); owner of PCs for 25 years, learned of untold number of operating systems.

Now? Alice wants everything simplified, as she would do so in her head. Alas, what is intuitive to Alice vs. the population at large spans a large gap.

In the meantime, Alice has made the leap into 21st century webgrrl. How?

Alice joins Facebook

Never say never, apparently. After about two years of rejecting invitations, Alice has given in. Web 2.0, here she comes. Or some variation and with major hesitation, Alice has decided to approximate a social networker.

She wonders if anyone else thinks Facebook is junior-high-school note-passing on steroids. Or high school folks simultaneously ducked out for a smoke of whatever substance pleases.

With enough "friends," Alice has discovered, on Facebook you're never alone. Hearing from someone you know, however vaguely, seems akin to to the result of tossing spaghetti on the wall and hoping some of it sticks. In real life, Alice believes if you have five true friends, you are blessed.

On Facebook however, it's all about quantity. "What's on your mind?" my opening page asks. Usually I don't think the answer suitable for public consumption. If you really want to Go Ask Alice, ask her here.

Among my questions: does Facebook actually bring together people who want to be rediscovered in one's life, or does it bring up parts of the past we'd really rather not acknowledge on a Wall.

Most of my Facebook "friends" are people I know personally, in real life. The rest are my blogging friends, whom I have known in cyberspace for many years.

Alice is very much a result of her breeding: she was raised as an anachronism, as it turns out. She wants a separate personal and professional life, boundaries of the 20th century that seem to be indistinct in the 21st century. And, like The Velveteen Rabbit, Alice wants to know what's real.

On Facebook, Alice finds communication somewhat detached. It has been prettied up with more applications than Alice will ever understand, and lots of icons that make much better sense in real life, i.e., getting someone a drink, rather than giving them the Facebook equivalent.

If someone handed you a photo of a glass of wine, there isn't anything to swallow, except metaphorically, and Alice isn't so sure Facebook addicts retain the ability to distinguish metaphor -- a polite and perhaps inexact term for our "secondary, simulated reality" -- for "first-degree reality."

She finds one determination best made in the pages analyzing Don Delillo's White Noise. It has been explained as follows:

"In 1983, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote Simulations. In it, he maintains that the postmodern world privileges simulacra over reality; we believe our secondary, simulated reality is more real than first-degree reality.

"His classic example is that Disneyland, a fantasy world, seems more real to us than the real world. DeLillo utilizes this idea throughout White Noise, focusing on a nation reared on the simulated reality of the media which even had a former actor (Ronald Reagan) as President at the time."

In 2009, we in Wonderland live with the white noise of our nanny-state governments. Which makes more pollution, bus exhaust or five minutes of second-hand tobacco smoke? Alice knows which way her vote is going, and it's not going in favor of Rudy and Mike, those key window dressers of her day.

Times Square didn't used to be Disneyland; it was a real, honest in the grittiest sense, place where Broadway and 42nd St. connected. Cars and pedestrians only, thankyouverymuch. Until now, when Mike has seen fit to shut the intersection to cars and spread out lawn chairs instead. Surely there are better places for lawn chairs -- Central Park comes to mind.

Lawn chairs aren't called "street chairs" for a reason. Note to Mayor Mike's office: move the damn chairs into a park. Don't leave them clogging the intersection. It's not as if there will be less traffic; it's just that the drivers are going to hit the road rage dial faster and faster as the traffic piles up.

And those horns blaring? A driver with road rage is not going to go forth under the white noise radar. No, horns blast white noise back to the shrink's office, where they work.

A few more words on White Noise:

"DeLillo says the idea for White Noise came to him while he watched television news, and realized that toxic spills were becoming such a daily occurrence that no one the news cared about them -- only those affected by the spills cared.

"We can see this idea play out in the airborne toxic event in White Noise, when people are upset that the media pays their crisis little attention, but it emerges in subtler ways when DeLillo examines the consumerist, technological atmospheres of death we create for ourselves -- from our living rooms to our cars to our supermarkets.

"DeLillo also takes a look at several more typically postmodern ideas -- ambiguity of identity, waste, racial heterogeneity, the family -- and gives them his astute, humorous spin. Though most readers find his view of American society harsh and pessimistic, others see the ending of White Noise -- with its bonding through consumerism in the face of death -- as subversively "uplifting."

Facebook is all about bonding, however ingenuously. We write on Walls; therefore we exist. We have some semblance of a connection with humanity. Yet Alice still hears streams of shrink-office white noise boxes, even as the air conditioner at home imitates the sound.

There is a gap, between what we write and what is real, or, more precisely, what we want to reveal and what seeing us in person would reveal. Into that gap floods white noise in all its manifestations, keeping us with one foot in Disneyland, and only one grasping the floor that is genuine and tangible and no imitation of anything but itself.

The road not taken

When Robert Frost was writing, his choice, it appears, was between two routes, and he chose the one less traveled by. I live on one of those roads less traveled by, and yes, it has made all the difference. However, my choices, here in the 21st century, are far more vast and confusing.

Over the weekend, the Artist and I got lost in upstate New York so many times, all we could do was laugh. How else react when you call a hotel to ask directions, and they aren't sure of which little county routes are required to arrive there?

But I had thought, somehow, that she and I shared the road less traveled, until Sunday night when it became clear that, like route 9 upstate, there were several roads with similar names -- 9G, 9W, 9A and other permutations -- and underneath us, we did not have our feet on the same asphalt. We are, apparently, on different sides of the river.

For me it was if the roads had all upended, leaving me to fall out of the car, holding on -- to what, I don't know -- for sheer life. Had I misread the situation so completely? Failed to hear any of the warning signs? For she and I, it turns out, are not on the same road. For that I am sad and sorry. If hope is the thing with feathers, it may be a while before I can reconstruct mine.

Joni Mitchell echoes in my head: "I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling. Looking for something, what can it be?....I want to have fun, I want to shine like the sun; I want to be the one that you want to see...." But I am not, apparently.

And, irony of ironies, we were making love in my bedroom just as the building manager whose bedroom wall adjoined mine, was busy dying. I know I am not supposed to think that way. But Monday I was shattered by Sunday night's phone call, and Tuesday morning, by a slip of paper shoved under my door.

You never know, do you, when is the last time you will see a person, or the last time you will make love with someone? When the two events hit so close together, it is a wonder anyone can stay on any road, more or less traveled, at all.

Bob Dylan had it right: "I would not feel so alone.....everybody must get stoned." A leaf from the new book at Alice's bedside table, and perhaps her new motto for this next season of brave new world. It may be the only way she can stay on this road, or any road, just to make it through another day, until she is healed.

Back in the real world, sort of

Home again, home again, earlier than planned. Call me Spanish school dropout. (No graduation day for me.) Just say it in English, because my vocab in espanol is rather limited. So is my knowledge of verbs.

In Argentina, I lived in the present tense. I had no past and no future. It is an interesting way to perceive and the world.

Actually, it is quite apropos, given our brave new world and goings-on in Wonderland and places beyond. The past is history and the future a huge question mark. Will Alice need to find another gig to keep her in the style to which she is accustomed? Or are those days gone, regardless of what gig she comes up with?

Teaching English as a second language seems a possibility. It is a gig with instant credibility, something Alice believes has been lost in her current so-called profession. She thinks Madoff made everyone in her line of work appear as credible as car salesmen are usually wont to be. This does not inspire trust, a necessary element in Alice's work.

In Wonderland Alice is grateful for her health and mobility: TBF (aka Clover's Companion) had a second back surgery in Alice's absence. She will spend months recuperating. Alice would still feel better if TBF would hire a pro for her caretaking, but it's not her choice.

Husband-the-doctor (HTmD), to Alice, appears on the verge of a breakdown. Alice kindly brought him Cuban cigars that she had rolled in a T-shirt in her suitcase. She tells him to take care of himself, but he seems to fall short in that arena.

Today he shopped and brought home the wrong toilet paper, to TBF's dismay. Alice held her tongue. To her, as we know, toilet paper is not created equal. HTmD is a boy; he doesn't make the distinctions Alice and TBF make. He is also bewildered by all things domestic, and Alice wonders how he survived his lengthy bachelorhood.

HTmD is running himself ragged while TBF is incapacitated, calling herself a cripple with a scoliosis-like brace to wear as part of the recovery plan. He is stunningly clueless about their everyday life -- all things remotely domestic.

Alice has never lived in the world of couples, where one brings in the money and the other manages it, much less one in which food supply falls to the female and the male seems unable to manage for himself. Perhaps it is simply all the stress: Alice will buy that. Under stress, brushing teeth can be problematic.

Doctor-husband cannot ascertain by himself where to put the tuna fish cans. He cannot apply heat to food (nor can TBF). That in itself is not a problem, but his failure to find nutrition that is not on the Chinese food or pizza menu puzzles Alice. Shouldn't an M.D. know what they call a balanced meal? Perhaps order one to be delivered? Cash is not the problem, but common sense is in short supply, or perhaps stress has taken its place.

This is why Alice ran away, and why Alice, once she excavates her dining room table, will be just as happy to get on the plane to Mexico next week. She cannot, it seems, bear witness to that which drives her insane. Apparently Alice is a control freak: who knew? Or is Alice the last to get that memo?

In BA Alice had fleeting maternal tendencies: one day she almost decided to wake up the Twit for school, and another night, while they smoked on the balcony, Alice wanted to lecture her about protein and safe sex. (The women of Buenos Aires have emergency kits for sale in their ladies' rooms: two pesos for a toothbrush, one for a condom. That will see them through the night.) However, Alice refrained.

Twit is massively devoted to Boyfriend, with whom she "chats" for hours via instant messaging, although that doesn't stop her from going out and finding a boy to fuck. One morning she came home and announced that she had gotten laid. Alice hoped that having sex would have calmed her down a bit, but no such luck.

When Alice was 19, she probably acted very much like Twit, except that she kept a bit more of her personal life to herself, and she didn't feel the need to tell anyone how intelligent she was. She was probably more about the hair, makeup, and clothes than she remembers. In retrospect, she was definitely more about the conquests than the intimacy.

Thirty years later, Alice has a different take on the world. She is again dating: tonight is her second date with the Artist, a woman Alice met on line and with whom she giggles madly on the telephone. They courted via email during Alice's hiatus. The Artist's Valentine's Day/Friday the 13th email cheered Alice immensely.

So, brave new world aside, Alice is up for more adventures. Keep your fingers (or other parts of your anatomy, as you choose) crossed for her. She wants something to work out with the Artist. Alice, perhaps, has found something to hope for, something/someone to add to her life.

Citi was a group...

...now it's two suits holding hands on a high floor of the Citicorp building, wishing the windows would open so they could jump.

As I may have observed before: the only reason they aren't on a street corner selling apples is because the corner vegetable vendor slot is occupied by someone for whom English is a second language. Yes, we've managed to outsource apple selling.

Every day I turn around and the economy hemorrhages more red ink. Planning for the future has become an utter crapshoot: sure I'll plan if you want to pay me, but honestly? You would be better off going to the movies and getting some entertainment value for your dollar, not to mention a couple of hours of distraction.

More and more, the concept of financial planning is looking a lot like writing fiction. Since no one knows what's going to happen, I can make up any scenario I want. I'm writing if you're buying. Actually, I'm writing no matter what. I can, after all, still construct a sentence.

Thanksgiving is fast upon us, and all the food has been ordered, set for delivery tomorrow. It's the one day of the year my mother cooks, and should I try to deviate from her menu even by one ingredient, I will hear about it. It's easier just to buy the food, point her toward the kitchen, and follow instructions to the letter.

For someone who otherwise can scarcely apply heat to food, my mother is far more opinionated on how things should be prepared than anyone might logically expect. For her, there's the right way, or the doorway, even in matters about which she is completely uninformed.

How do you raise a mother? You just let her do what she wants, and duck if you don't want the fallout to hit you.

I'm too old or too tired to argue -- not just on the family front, but on the we-can-change-the-world front. There was a brief, shining post-electoral moment when I felt an almost orgasmic rush of hope suring through my body.

It has since retreated, to somewhere in the far back of a closet, behind the lightbulbs and the printer paper, between the assorted extra computer cables and a year-long supply of laundry detergent.

I wish I could say I felt more optimistic. At the moment, though, I'm feeling a lot of empathy for those two suits on the high floor of the glassed-in office building. I'm just grateful I'm not up there with them, tempted to imagine myself as Superman. Right now, Underdog is more my style.

A guide to living in reduced circumstances

Alice is sad to report, it has come to this. She would much rather produce a guide to living under better circumstances; however, in this climate (read, economy tanked), it seems inappropriate.

Until the recent, shall we say, unpleasantness?, Alice made a living, as they say, from offering financial advice, a field whose existence appears rather tenuous. Thus Alice will offer a few words on the way she lives now.

It may be ordinary for some folks, but for Alice, it is not business as usual, not S.O.P. by a long shot. Alice is a baby boomer, part of a generation that has been known to act as if instant gratification takes too much time.

Food: Alice has rediscovered her kitchen. She markets -- in ordinary grocery stores, where she watches for good prices. She is applying heat to food on a regular basis. A prescription for burn cream has been filled, and Alice slathers it on with abandon.

Clothing: Fortunately, Alice was never much of a clothes horse. Now, she is not even a clothes pony. More like a clothes shih tzu, if that. So much for predictions of pricey underwear. It's strictly Hanes -- her way or the highway. As for outer layers, good-bye catalogs; hello, thrift shops.

It's time for pre-owned clothes. Pre-owned shoes. Maybe freebies from craigslist, or bargains at a church rummage sale. (Do they still have rummage sales? Does Alice know how to rummage?) The lipstick factor is prominent in Alice's toiletry plans.

Might even be time to relearn to sew, although that could cost Alice a finger or two, which would push health care out of reach.

Shelter: At least the mortgage is paid off. There will be no improvements to shelter short of hanging already in-house paintings and reorganizing the bookshelves and closets.

Heat may be curtailed, although Alice will be damned if she's going broke in the dark. Perhaps she will rearrange the living room furniture. Or would that be the deck chairs on the ship that may remain nameless?

Travel: all air travel has been postponed indefinitely, with the exception of tickets procured with frequent flyer miles to places where Alice may stay with friends. Inter-Wonderland transit has gone public.

It's subways, buses, and trains. Au revoir les taxis, those little yellow vehicles that have sped Alice from one part of town to another on a regular basis in the past.

Entertainment: Welcome to free movies on demand. Let's watch all DVDs purchased but still sealed against thievery. Read all books acquired with spines still uncracked. Can Alice interest you in a game of Monopoly? (Read about its ironic history here.) Anyone want to ante up for a game of nickel-dime-quarter poker?

Who cares if you lose? It's only money, right? Isn't it? asks the financial planner. What she really wants to know is, how far can we go before we hit bottom? Are we there yet? Please? Even the Wizard off Wall Street, major shareholder in Capitalist, inc., seems a few steps off. (Damn it, Alice should have remembered white men can't dance.)

Is there a 12-step program for the global economy?

Contemplating what to defrost for dinner, Alice is profoundly depressed. Previously she had never considered the freezer section a home for much more than ice trays, nukable proteins, extra smoked salmon, bagels, butter, and coffee.

Now she has said adieu to her menu drawer and has wrapped various meats, first in plastic wrap, followed by aluminum foil, labeling the packets with indelible marker by contents and date received. In the 'burbs, growing up, Alice remembers seeing her father do this with entire filet mignons he had cut into portion size.

It feels different now, and part of Alice is relieved her beloved Daddy isn't around for this 21st century meltdown. On the other hand, he taught her that life was a banquet. It's just that Alice hadn't planned on getting the check.

Here's to hoping the light at the end of the tunnel isn't an oncoming train.

Rearrange the world...

it's dying, to get better....

We might just make it after all!

Eastern Standard Time: a brave new world

The sun set at 4;49 this afternoon, one day into spring forward, fall back, the changing of the clocks that I forget, season after season. This autumn, however, is different. Oh, we have fallen back -- in so many ways I don't care to enumerate them.

All I can do is hope that tomorrow, this country springs forward. Please, let the map turn blue. Let's have a president before midnight, the one, for once, whom I want.

It seems that recently, I can remember 40 years ago and my third-grade class better than I can what I told my best friend on the phone yesterday. As daylight shrinks, so, it seems, does my capacity to hold on to anything more than, say, the fact I am growing my hair to donate it in memory of Dona, my dear friend who died of cancer last Halloween.

Then, there are my menopausal marches, those hours in the park that I am free from computers, telephones, any form of electronic connection to the world. Mile after mile, all I have to do is put one foot in front of the other, check my pedometer for speed and my heart rate monitor to see if I'm in the right zone.

Sometimes I think I hit my zone in the last century. So much about me remains twentieth century, and damn proud of it. For example, I am not a willing member of the DIY economy. Specialization of labor had its good points, and with the computerization of the world, we appear to have lost it.

I particularly liked the part where human beings answered telephones and it wasn't considered outre to wish to receive physical bills in the mail. Then of course, there is the lost travel agent. I preferred it when I was not in charge of booking tickets, screening hotels from Web site descriptions, and guessing which company had the best tour guides. I liked a little knowledge from those who possessed it and were happy to share it for a fee.

But that was then and this is now: let's just hope that our brave new world brings us something genuinely for the better. If not, I fear we are, how to say it delicately? no, no way -- just about doomed.

Plan B for the middle class?

It's official: New York State has declared me a card-carrying, check-rebate-worthy member of the middle class, handing out what is called a "2008 Middle Class STAR rebate check." My rebate is based on various factors, and it is billed as a rebate "in addition to the amount of relief [ital mine] I receive under NYS's existing School Tax Relief Program (STAR).

I have mixed emotions regarding the "relief" I receive. On the one hand, I do not, nor do any of my friends, colleagues, or relatives, have any children in the New York City Public School System. On the other hand, our schools suck; they need all the funding they can get. These kids will need to work; someone has to pay into Social Security.

It is Halloween Eve, a night during which I do think of children. I think of why I will not be one of those apartment dwellers who opens her door to the building's trick-or-treaters. The last time I did, the children ran in a pack, grabbing for candy as if they hadn't seen food since their last Federally subsidized school lunch.

They barely said "trick or treat"; none stayed long enough for me to admire their costumes; and none said thank you. No one in this building, this bastion of the middle class, has a school lunch subsidized by anyone other than a parent. A parent who, as far as I can see, appears not to have taught his/her kids any manners.

(This may not be the first Halloween I have ranted about the neighbors' children.) But if these children are our future, my late poet-friend's book title remains apropos: Be Properly Scared.

I do remember watching my cousins' children in Maine, seeing the inability of a sixth grade teacher to catch a major grammar error in the first sentence of one child's essay. In Massachusetts, my assigned role is to distinguish between less and fewer, to tackle proper use of prepositions and verb tenses, as well as assert the importance of asking "may I," not "can I."

Granted, I am one of the few remaining grammar Nazis, but I maintain that it is much easier to communicate when everyone can speak the same language, and can create subjects that match their predicates. I am not sure about the future, in the land of what can kindly be called the short-attention-span.

Life is not a video game, contrary to what computers and game boys may try to teach. For one thing, you can't always shoot the bad guy; sometimes, it's simply not an option, and besides, the bad guy is difficult to identify. For another, practice will not get you to Carnegie Hall. Practice will screw up the joints in your fingers to the point that when you are old enough to buy a drink, you will lack the ability to hold the glass.

Where I'm coming from today is my gut feeling that Plan A for the middle class, that economic merry-go-round we all thought would never stop, has thrown all its riders to the ground. It's not working. We need to go to Plan B -- but first, we need to figure out what it is.

No matte what happens next Tuesday (and I've been ready to cast my vote for at least a month), I don't think Plan B will materialize at any time soon. Government simply isn't cut out to work that way.

As my friend winding up 30 years at the FBI says, "we bring you yesterday's technology tomorrow." I assume that means that government does do Windows, but it probably doesn't do VISTA, much less anything to do with a Mac.

Obviously, at this moment, I don't think the proverbial glass is half full. I'm not sure I think it is even half empty. It seems more likely that as we wait for Plan B (the one in which politicians and finance people admit the economy has tanked, not that the economic outlook has been reduced, or diminished, or whatever euphemism they choose), that the glass is cracked.

All I can do is hope someone has some Crazy-Glue in his or her back pocket. Cause that's what we need to hold a Plan B together. Otherwise, well, let's not go to otherwise just now. Tomorrow is, after all, another day.