Under the Tree of Knowledge       

Extruded from a socialist womb,

One becomes separate,

Begins a lifelong quest

To understand, perhaps;

To thrive and survive;

Leaves the fount of mothermilk,

Invades the mortal world

To follow shining siren gods

Of human goodness

And love for other than

The Self,

Finding that food and shelter,

Love and justice,

Are private and political property,

Sought and bought with

Lies and barterd liberty.

Rejecting the solace of the tomb,

One may survive, perhaps,

Living secure, and healthy

Under a quiet  comfortable cortex,

In the dark-mattered age

Of Knowledge:

Now,

Free from fear of life

Everlasting,

Here

Among the shreds of memory,

Treasures, pleasures and baubles,

Errors, regrets, and wrongs,

Awaiting a time as alone and unknown

as before our own beginning,

There

Among the shards of a million gods,

And a trillion fleshless human shades,

Where silence is only broken

By the electromagnetic voice

Of a fleet and fleeing universe.

No one else was around

When our eyes first met

The wind had shut down

The parking lot was wet.

He was young, and tall

Disheveled and gaunt,

As he lounged at the wall

Of the darkened restaurant.

I quick- locked the door

Started the car,

And groped the floor

For an iron tire  bar .

He came fast to ask

To use my cell phone;

But I drove away fast

And left him alone.

The cold wind cursed me

And called up more rain.

His frantic eyes shamed me,

And I turned back again.

What else could I do

To undo a bad deed

Done to someone who

Was in some sort of need.

But he wasn’t there

That other man’s son.

So to prove that I care

I undid the undone,

The predawn night

Called up the dawn,

I called  up the sight

Of  the man who was gone,

Sat there alone,

With that coward who’d run

Pulled out our phone

And called 911.

The entire perineum was grotesquely engorged with purple subcutaneous blood despite four soft drains of the sort usually placed surgically to allow escape of serum or blood. A purplish black hugely blood swollen penis was all that was left of his genitals.  A ragged row of poorly placed stitches ran from its base to the anus, along an irregular midline incision that slowly oozed dark blood.  Where the emergency is concerned, the case was essentially over;  Next, call  a surgeon to repair the damage, and even that would be simple. But where the history and its legal consequences would lead was more complex; and to my mind, far more interesting. Despite being around emergency rooms all my professional life, beginning in 1954 as an $8 per night  moonlighting medical student, I had never seen, nor even imagined, this case. After so many days and nights in ERs I innocently, and wrongly,  believed myself aware of the entire sexual range of behavior in our society.

A brief health history was not particularly revealing. My patient was a computer programmer, lived inFloridawith his male partner, was in good health, took no medicines, and even had current tetanus shot.His moderate obesity was of no medical at the moment.

“ You live in Florida? But of course this isSacramento”

“Yes.”

“Well,” I said, “You have definitely been castrated. Was it an assault?”

“No. I paid for it.”

“Couldn’t you have had  that done professionally?”

“Too expensive. Too many hassles. My partner told me not to do this, but it’s always been a fantasy of mine.”

Several years ago he became internet connected with some people who  shared fantasies of castration. That led to sharing erotic castration phone  sex.

“Three years ago I purchased an actual fantasy experience in Chicago. Expensive, but I work hard and make good money. It was splendid, incomparable to anything else.  This year the same people offered it in San Francisco.”

“But” I ventured, “this seems to be the real thing. Do you want to press charges?”

“No. You know? I think I’ll be very happy with the result. I couldn’t get this done anywhere for $5000 and it would take years, and many more $$ to convince people.”

“Do you mind telling me how it went?”

“It was inSan Francisco. They said fly to Sacramento for security.”

He was blindfolded during a long ride; he remembers a toll bridge. When the blindfold was removed he found himself in a room with lots of light, a gurney with and IV hanging on the side pole, and people in surgical gowns.

“It was absolutely  overwhelming, unforgettable; but over too soon, right  after  an IV was started; the very next thing I remember is my Sacramento contact waking me in my motel room. The sheets were soaked with blood.  I was terribly weak and had vomited. He cleaned me up, and drove me here.”

After my patient’s admission to the surgery service, my duties were complete, right? Wrong.  Years ago a physician’s only obligation was to a patient. Now the State has ended that primitive contract, claiming a right to try to protect everyone from everyone and everything, through legislation and regulation. So, dutifully (and to avoid fine, imprisonment, loss of license, litigation, and who knows what else; no one car read all the fine print!) I called the police both locally and inSan Francisco. But since my patient said he didn’t want to press charges or even provide significant details, they didn’t want to hear more or even to interview him. TheSan Francisco cop  I spoke with found the episode neither alarming nor particularly rare. “It’s freedom, like Joplin said. He ain’t got nothin’ left to lose. Down there anyways. Like, no more worries.” I recorded the badge numbers in the record, looked ruefully at the wall clock, and picked up the next patient’s chart.

The entrance fee was 75 percent off to honor War on Hunger Day, so a huge crowd was expected; bar codes were assigned to children under 12 and security guards carried portable scanners.  Each child was tagged with a waterproof, tamperproof placard-pendant in the shape of a familiar Disney character.  Their home town was indelibly writ large on the front in phosphorescent chartreuse with the parent or responsible adult’s name address and phone numbers on the back.

We hadn’t seen “It’s a Small World XVII yet so joined that line immediately. There were only about 200 people lined up at the beginning of the covered entry tunnel. The day would be warm and clear.  I felt sure we’d be in the shade before long even though we were still so far from the front that I couldn’t hear the Small World music. My son was aPlutoVeniceBeach. Wanting to be sure we were in the right line, I asked the Donald Brooklyn’s adult in front of me.

“Hi! I’m Don Nocere. Do you know if this is the Small World line?” He turned his head slightly but not his trunk and spoke from the corner of his mouth:

“How should I know, Mack.”  I turned to the Belle Bogota’s lady behind me and asked again, but she looked terrified, and laid down some machinegun Spanish. The Belle herself, interpreted: “She don’ know.” I got on top of a bench to look and still couldn’t tell. Finally the Minnie Minneapolis’ adult, two places back, went to ask, leaving an uncle to watch the Minnie. In about 20 minutes the Minnie’s uncle asked would I save his place while he took Minnie to pee?

Life goes on, even in line. People began to interact, usually with tolerance, sometimes with humor, occasionally with irritation. Mickey San Jose’s man (there were quite a few Mickeys and Minnies) was constantly on a cell phone; he didn’t look the e.type but soon we overheard stock trading, game playing and hushed tones that sounded like phone sex.

We inched along at times and by dusk we reached the covered area.  The line began to snake and double back on itself. People in adjacent rows became quite involved with one another. An Aladdin agreed to move back, so as not to be separated from a Snow White. People fromBrazilmoved to be with their countrymen. Communities formed. Brief conflicts between gang like cadres of boys occurred.

By midnight some people, probably strangers unaccustomed to lines, became restless, and complained to an attendant who reassured them that the park would stay open until all in line had completed the ride. The management brought out cots and bedding. In their opinion, they said, this was indeed the line for ‘It’s a Small World XVII’.  We were advised that Disney would rent laptops with CDs of the rest of the various rides and shows.

By 9 AM MinnieMinneapolisand her uncle had still not returned. Some felt we should send out a search party. A Somebody Sacramento insisted loudly:

“What the hell, we’ll have to send people out to search for the searchers.  Minnie’s got a sign on anyway!  We really need to organize here”!  There was general agreement  that a properly diverse ‘Line Council’ should be elected. The Californians were many, of course. They controlled the Council and elected Mickey San Jose Chair. All the Mickeys and Minnies voted for him.  The Council’s first act was to sell  numbered passes so we could go and come without losing place in line – to the bathroom, or to get food, whatever.

In the second week a big fight broke out between some gang members, a Louie Portland and a Dopey Miami. Both had been drinking and Louie accused Dopy of selling fake smack. People joined the argument, leading to shouting, shoving, cussing, bird flipping and finger whipping. A shot was fired, Disney Security appeared and Dopey and Louie were both thrown out. The council named as Sergeant at Arms and Line Sherriff  the father of  Pittsburgh Little Mermaid who was a defensive lineman for the Steelers.

Disney did take off the trash, but other services were provided by entrepreneurs from the line:  laundry, tent rentals, psychological counseling, medical care, alcohol, banking and loans. Religious services were held on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Pocahontas Beirut’s older sister set up a tent massage parlor, but some folks found the noises irritating, so the Council issued permits, taxed the massage artists-and confined business to some distance where they could be supervised personally by Council members.

Fall came; we never heard from Minnie Minneapolis or her uncle again. The memorial service was moving. We set a little cross with a Madonna by the Women’s Rest Room flower bed, next to two other small shrines. Snow White and Aladdin were married; she was obviously pregnant. Some were upset by the miscegenation: they were not from the same movie or cartoon. Line Living became democratic, orderly. Line living took on a rhythm, a civilized certainty.

Then it happened, as unannounced as an earthquake.   A loud speaker vomited down the plastic voice of a Disney Gabriel:

“Welcome to It’s a Small World Seventeen! As you board, please move to the end of your row. Remain seated and keep your arms inside your vessel. Have a Safe Ride, and a Good Day.” We were herded with strangers from unknown regions of the line into those dreary little plastic boats, like cattle for slaughter. The song seemed ridiculous, mocking, cloying, as it repeated over and over again.

‘It’s a world of Laughter, A world of Peace’… I became physically ill and vomited into the crystal clear chemical blue moat.  My world ended at the end of the line.

961 words

No one else was around

When our eyes first met

The wind had shut down

The parking lot was wet.

#

He was young, and tall

Disheveled and gaunt,

As he lounged at the wall

Of the darkened restaurant.

#

I locked all the doors

Started the car,

And  reached to  the  floor

For that iron bar .

#

He came quick and asked

To use my cell phone;

But I drove away  fast

And left him alone.

#

But the cold wind cursed me

And called up more rain.

The dark night shamed me,

And I turned back again.

#

What else could I do

To undo a coward’s deed

Done to someone who

Was in some sort of need.

#

But he wasn’t  there

That other man’s son,

So to show that I care

I undid the undone,

#

Sat ashamed and alone,

Took the clip from my gun,

Pulled out my  cell phone,

And punched up  911.

##################################

Yo le digo tío-,

I call him uncle

Lo digo pa’ joder.

Just to piss him off.

Yo era forastero, solitario,

I was a stranger, alone,

Un poco amargado, resentido-

Quite bitter, resentful.

Pero me trató con sencillez,

But he treated me with openness,

Con cariño como si fuera digno de respeto,

And affection as if I merited respect.

Como si no hubiera cagado mi vida.

As if I hadn’t fucked up my life.

Cuando no soñaba, él me alimentó con sueños suyos.

When I couldn’t dream he fed me his own

Sueños Gonzalez, raros, bellos,

Gonzalez dreams, strange, and beautiful,

Con vitaminas de locura.

With vitamins of insanity.

Todavía  sueño con la vida más que la muerte,

I still dream of life more than death.

Puedo dar y recibir, soy sano, fuerte.

Can give, receive, am whole, strong.

Y todavía le digo tío,

And still I call him Uncle,

Porque no tengo nombre suficientemente grande,

For there’s no word great enough,

Ni profundo, ni ancho,

Or deep enough or wide,

Para este hombre que le digo tío,

For this man I call Uncle,

Aunque no es tío mío.

Who is no uncle of mine.

A few years later Tío got prostate cancer and I advised no aggressive treatment. Eight years after a dense stroke, he is  alert, diapered, and walks with difficulty, preferring to be wheeled about; he loves his bed. He still radiates good cheer, but sometimes in a moment of weakness confesses an ineffable  sadness.  After the dreaded  cancer diagnosis,  I had promised to interfere personally if he ever requested it. He has never asked.  Neither have I;  and the dreaded cancer has never spoken a word.  

MSNBC feed  3/27/2011 :14:48 AM ET, this appears;  the precise date and time  offer  a patina of  pseudo science:

RADIATION 10 MILLION TIMES NORMAL AT JAPAN NUCLEAR PLANT!

Then, with no coherent attempt to provide perspective  or describe ‘ normal’ the radiation is asserted to be 1000 mSv per hour, the equivalent to (sic) “29 CT scans according to NBC News Experts.”   Nowhere does it suggest that the 1000 mSv dose requires sitting in the contaminated pool for an hour.  The Expert comparison to 29 CT scans is simply absurd.  It seems clear that scandalous, out of context, ridiculous statements, like  vague, mindless comparisons to past nuclear accidents, sell newspapers, magazines, and TV time, but do not  inform.

On the other hand, we are rarely told  much about radiation from medical imaging. Perhaps our national dosing of medical ionizing radiation is something we are willing to accept for value received. Perhaps it is excessive. But whichever the case, we generally remain as ignorant of one sort of radiation risk as the other.  How infuriating! And how unfortunate that our public comprehension of ionizing irradiation is so little better than it was three generations ago at the dawn of the nuclear age. Was it reasonable to expect our media to inform rather than to merely profit through clever exaggeration? If so, they have failed. “Nucular” or “nuclear,” who cares! Ignorance and fear are the same no matter what its name!  No wonder we may rush to buy gas masks, iodine or KI on our way home from a whole body scan.

We cannot rely on ‘experts’.  And fortunately we no longer have to. The net is there, all the information is there.  As we might infer from significant books like ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’ , people can collectively be less stupid than individuals; now, thanks to the net, we can be well informed about ionizing radiation even if we are not nuclear physicists. We can have, or quickly find, the best available pertinent facts.  Moreover, an order for a CT scan is a prescription for irradiating ionization. It well may be worth the exposure. But both physicians and patients can and should thoughtfully consider the risks versus benefits of prescribed  radiation, and avoid unnecessary exposures.

My introduction to nuclear warfare, thanks to the US Navy, dates back decades. Although the more practical facts of the physics haven’t changed that  much, my knowledge of it, I fear, has gone through quite a few half-lives of attrition. So I had to look to the net for help. The information is all there.  I won’t claim that the material to be found is coherent; it is sometimes conflicting and often confusing.  But that is true of all  pronouncements including those of experts,  because no one puts information out anywhere without a particular view, or even at times a particular self interest. We live in a time when it is within reach of every person, every tweeter, every  web surfer to uncover as many  facts as exist!  I found the information below to be  readily accessible and pertinent:

Tissue doses of radiation are often measured or stated in ”milli sieverts” (mSv), a quantity of ionizing radiation dose absorbed and affecting body cells. While ionizing radiation resulting from nuclear explosions is quite variable due to the number of isotopes and other factors, X-ray irradiation is comparatively uniform, so that mSv are a reliable and useful estimate of risk of most common radiation to people. The numbers are  very useful even when open to argument because of the many variables. Here are some mSv comparisons with an older  tissue dose radiation measure, REMs, or Roentgen Equivalents, Man. (Sorry, women; you have Madam Curie):

• 1 rem = 0.01 Sv = 10 mSv

• 1 mrem = 0.00001 Sv = 0.01 mSv = 10 μSv

• 1 Sv = 100 rem = 100,000 mrem (or millirem)

• 1 mSv = 100 mrem = 0.1 rem

• 1 μSv = 0.1 mrem

(In this essay I use only mSv to make comparisons cleaner.)

Comparative risk of radiation exposure is important and useful both to physicians whose decisions determine the dosages prescribed to patients and to those of us who are exposed to otherwise confusing information and misinformation. It helps to have perspective, which is valuable even when  ‘experts’ argue about precise numbers.  In the much maligned airport screenings, for example, it may help to know that one would undergo:

400 airport screenings to absorb the same mSv as one chest X-ray;

12,000 screenings compares to one mammogram;

20,000 screenings compares to one abdominal CT scan;

40,000 screenings is comparable to one whole body scan;

60,000 to one barium enema; and,

80,000 screenings to one neonatal abdominal CT scan.

Estimates of relative radiation risk from medical imaging, and procedures,  are extremely variable. Yet it is clear that cumulative doses are increasing, and that medical radiation exposure can be significant; whether people disagree by 10 or even 30 percent matters little. The following is a conflation of my remote memory and the harvest from the net today. Here are a few net.ferences:

http://xkcd.com/radiation/ emedicine.medscape.
com/article/1464228-overview;
and

http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts

/RadiationEmittingProductsandProcedures/Medical
Imaging/MedicalX-Rays/ucm115329.htm.

But the sources are so many, and so easy to access, that for more I will ask  readers to jump into the net and flail about on your own.  I found the accompanying dose estimates of interest. These doses are all in mSv.

Estimated irradiation for medical procedures; Dose in mSv

chest X-ray______________0.1–0.2

each dental X-ray ________ 0.2

head CT________________ 1.5

mammogram ____________ 3

CT abdomen ____________  5.3

chest CT ________________5.8

heart CT and angio________ 6–13

barium enema ___________12–15

angio/vascular study_______19

infant Abdomen CT________ 20

angio/cardiac study ________70

Estimates of average yearly radiation exposure Dose in mSv

background radiation (earth sun, etc) __________________2–3

living within 50 miles of a nuclear power generating plant__ 0.009

living within 50 miles of a coal powered generating plant___ 0.03

daily use of a computer screen or other CRT____________  0.1

commercial full time occupational high altitude air travel____ 2

maximum  allowed annual dose  for nuclear plant workers   _  50

lowest one year dose clearly related to cancer___________ 100

Estimates of acute (or per day) radiation dose Dose in mSv

living within 10 miles of the 3 Mile Island accident____ 0.01

Sacramento to Paris commercial air flight__________  0.085

dose limit for workers in a life saving emergency ___250

one hour next to the Chernobyl meltdown ________300

dose causing transient symptoms______________ 400

dose causing severe radiation sickness or death_ _ 2000

lethal dose_________________________2000–4000

After combing the web, and collating  information from diverse sources, surely I have made errors. So please call them to my attention, dear reader. Let us hope that airport screening will become more rational, and less driven by political nonsense; that unwise dosing of people with medical X-rays will cease; and that the media will act and report responsibly. But hopes are not always fulfilled; we are wise to maintain an informed perspective in case hope fails us.

He began before Time to fight,

To attack by day and by night;

To infiltrate, decay, and to break,

All that gives life and strength

To the unaware and unwary.

I flaunted my innate strength,

Ignored his puerile rant and cant.

He fell silent and at length

Took up timely weapons

Unknown to me, yet known to all.

He worked in covert and overt ways.

In heedless hauteur I grew old.

He became my anointed master,

I, a bonded servant, indentured

To my own chimerical freedom.

We dispute and redefine the term

And the terms of my servitude.

He denies my release, and

Grows ever more demanding.

Relying on my lies to myself.



I tire of caring for his aging flesh.

“The contract reads,” he says,

“that before your debt is paid,

You shall serve as my nursemaid.”

 I wash his tortured feet,

Warm his rheumy joints,

Attend his phlegm clogged airways,

And suffer remembrance of a past

Which was, and was not.

We bury and mourn

Those who loved us, or not.

We see  our shrinking frame

Through rheumy, crusting eyelids.

And I cede him even my own name.

Shaking, I feed and dress him;

Stumbling, I wear his worn shoes,

Curse my devotion to his survival,

And fear we shall live forever

While he fears that we shall not.

Yet we are sometime civil beings,

Not altogether evil,

Or altogether free

Not altogether kind

Or altogether blind.

We mistake and take

Each for the other self,

As Chronos dishes out

From bowls of bone and lime

The bittersweet gruel of Time.

Dec 26, 1997 Sophie: Di, Ja and Dot and I were talking about an idea. We’d like to try playing some  music they like for an hour or two, three times a day.  I know you hate most of it, like especially the opera.  And  Gilbert and Sullivan. Yowling don’t you say?  Incidentally Ja will be here for Mom’s birthday. Dot or I will meet hm at the airport. I stuck in   what we talked about the music from Ja’s email. Sorry, he’s dense sometimes!

It’s like food for them. Music and poetry are food for their mind.  For whatever reason, people seem to remember music and songs from their youth longer than anything else. With Bob and Melba especially, poetry is the same way. Sometimes, when I find them stuck to the dining room table like barnacles looking at stuff  they think they are reading, (not!), I can usually  get their juices going by asking Dad to quote a poem, like a Kipling. He can’t do it long because he starts to cry. Then Mom takes over. They will go on that way for an hour. When he forgets she fills in and vice versa. Actually she rarely  forgets though.

Ja forgets the real stuff: You’ll  have to adjust Dad’s hearing aid for him, or use the little pocket radio aid.  Otherwise you need to play it so loud you and the whole town will go crazy or deaf or both. So I left some earplugs by the record player. They are wax and work pretty well.

I’ve put most of the records in three piles on the counter: try playing one in each pile about mealtime every day, before or after doesn’t matter:

1) The Gilbert and Sullivans, the Rancheros and Panamanian stuff

2) The Operas

3) The symphonies.

The dose (Ha!) is one or two records, three times a day. No, not by mouth  or any other place.  Thanks, Di. Like Ja says YAAGDJ. You Are A Goddamn Jewel. (double ha!)

Dec 29, 1997 3PM Di: Well  this jewel may crack. They are listening to something awful. But it’s not making them sick. They sure are tough. It’s like rotten milk or old food, they are fine with it! My question is, why are you trying to get me to quit!? What did I do to deserve this.

Dec 31, 1997 9 AM Di: Whooopie.

Jan 3, 1998 Dot:  HAPPY BIRTHDAY MELBA!!! # 90!

9:30 Di: Up, bath, Dressed.  Like you said, we’ve been listening to all that noise I can’t stand most every day since Christmas. I may lose my mind, what’s left. But they like it. Problem is I have to play it so loud it cooks my brain through the wax ear plugs.

PM:  Ja: Great, Di!  Take some of the B vitamins for  your brain. Today they were talking about the Philippines.  Baguio. Tayabas. The earthquake at a Manila hotel when they moved outside to sleep on cots. The guy who polished the wooden floor by skating around on dried coconut husks.  The Grete Maersk* freighter that took them home, (1938?)  stopping in Hong Kong where a beggar  said to me

“ No mommie no poppy no whisky soda”;  money with holes; a  tilted cable car up a steep hill;  and snow on Xmas eve at sea.

Bob never speaks of troubles. Or of accomplishments either; for example he never mentions his central role in the theft of the ‘Stanford Axe’. I hear of that from the news media years later.   In the Philippines, I recall the open boat trip to Tayabas; piles of coconuts, a swampy ride on the back of a water buffalo to a remote jungle mine, geckos,  the log ladder up to the bamboo structure on stilts, where there was no need to sweep because anything that dropped on the ‘floor’ fell through the empty space between the bamboo slats. I remember dad treating an Igorot miner’s tropical ulcer with a dilute Clorox solution. Or maybe  lye?

But more significant was what I didn’t know:  There was a sit- down strike by the hard rock underground miners of the Tayabas gold mine. Bob made the mistake of defending them to the administration.  He was soon found lacking.. That was why we went home on the Grete Maersk, and the reason we were not in the Philippines at the start of WWII, and why he could not find a job as a mining engineer for the next four years, having to work as an underground miner himself. He was given the job of drilling blast holes and placing dynamite in Holden Washington, one of the largest underground  Copper mines in the country then. There he finally  met the  diamond drill manufacture E J Longyear, who hired him for work consistent with his training.  I didn’t know about much of this until the music dredged up so much of the past and exposed it to the present.

* The Danish shipping line of Maersk is still one of the world’s greatest commercial  fleets. The first Grete Maersk that carried us to the US was built in 1937, with only a  9000 metric tonne displacement capacity. It took on a small cadre of passengers as many similar cargo ships still do. However it is long gone. The new Grete Maersk is a container ship with a width of 43 meters and draft of 15 meters, carries about 8000 containers, with a  a gross register tonnage (GRT) of approximately 98 thousand metric  tonnes.