a real friend of mine is dead and i am in shock and can't even cry for him....

i had a true friend, his name was o'dell, he was from the deepest south, where whites and blacks still find it hard to exist together, yet alone be friends....i met him when i was a sophomore in college - 20 years ago?! he was the date of a girlfriend at bridgewater college to either our homecoming or winter formal dance....he and i clicked....he had always wanted to be a teacher and he had always wanted to come to new york city.....

o'dell became a teacher and worked for nearly 18 years in new york city. new york city became his great love. he romanced new york while he taught her children, and helped to raise another generation of kids to live and love without remorse....for almost 18 years, the little children in his 2nd, 3rd and then 5th grade classes loved mr. o'dell as they called him....he was a gentle giant to them...a very darkly complected man who might have scared them if he was walking along the sidewalk and they didn't know that he had the heart of a butterfly and the gentle nature of any bird newly hatched and aloft in a nest, featherless and flightless, only protected by the lofty height and the anticipated promise of nourishment from whatever the powers that be might bring him....

o'dell was shy, much like myself, more so in many ways actually. where i am one who has always forced myself to try to blend, to attend and even to exceed others just to prove to myself that i am almost as good as them in any way and therfore worthy of love and respect, o'dell always new he was worthy of more than love and respect and would accept nothing but his worth or better from anyone. for quiet and gentle, he was a fierce fighter for himself and his friends and his children.....

the biggest thing o'dell has ever taught anyone, including myself, and i wasn't technically ever a student of his, is that black and white aren't as defined as they would appear and they don't always combine to create gray like they do on a palet of paint...instead, he brought his childhood and the deep south, a dark, hot, dry and angry place filled with fear and nightly fires to the northern city schools of new york. by listening to his life unfold in every lesson, thousands of children learned that they were no more right by hurting each other than the men and women who had hurt the great great grandparents who slaved in the fields 200 years ago....he displaced the notion that white men are the great oppressors of all men....he discouraged the concept that black men have a right to be angry for injustices that history holds but no one owns outright....he made peace and foregiveness central to growing up and being alive....ask any of his "kids" what they loved or remember most about o'dell and they will tell you that he was their father for a year, he made sure they had lunch every day, he made sure that the man they called "father" wasn't hurting them anymore at home or that the woman they tried to hide behind didn't fall to the floor in tears after trying to put herself between the child and the anger they lived with....he coached them in what it means to love someone...he told them if they never got flowers on their birthday or a valentine in february or if they never heard the words "i love you" from another human being, that love was unescapable and that they would have him to turn to until their last breath if that was the only place they felt secure of self and loved in life....

o'dell didn't ever overstep the boundaries that teachers have been crossing for eternity....he never once raised his voice in class except in excitement....he didn't ever put his hand to a child in retaliation for any wrong doing....he never sent a child to the office for making rude comments in class or for doing the wrong thing, he instead made that child stand in front of the class and apologize to all the kids for wasting the time they should have been using to learn....he made them understand that learning sets a soul free and only a free soul can take a person to absolute freedom....

without ever asking for love, o'dell was loved by every student, every teacher and almost every parent he ever met and left an impact on....the few parents that didn't love him probably wish that they'd been able to participate in his plan for apologizing instead of the city and state's plan, because they were the abusive and the deranged few who hurt or molested their children and didn't show remorse, or worse, respect for someone who put his own life at risk daily by approaching them directly to confront and change the situation....o'dell had stepped into harms way on more than one occasion that i'm aware of personally...but o'dell's sense of right and wrong and his absolute conviction of good over evil never allowed him to falter when he was out to save a child. he didn't get paid for this, this was just something that needed to be done and he knew if he didn't do it, no one ever would, and he also knew the cycle of abuse would repeat in the next generation, and again after that.....

one of the things i can remember o'dell telling me as recently as last september or october was that one his greatest personal accomplishments in life was that in all his years teaching in new york city, not a single one of his students had ever been picked up and sent to jail for any reason....i don't think that many, if any, public school teachers are able to say that in this city, especially in the neighborhood where o'dell taught...one time i think he told me that only about 7 of the kids in his class in any year would probably graduate from high school, but that entire number would also graduate from college. he never looked at it like the other 23 students were lost by not graduating, instead he considered that they were somehow saved and inspired by having learned survival doesn't mean stealing and caring doesn't mean not-beating you today....

i found out on saturday, from an acquaintance who had been one of o'dell's students his first year teaching in new york city, that he had heard o'dell died right before christmas....i saw o'dell right after thanksgiving when i was so heartsick and alone that i needed someone's shoulder to cry on....he invited me over as he had a million times before and we sat over cups of really bad coffee (he learned to make coffee in the teacher lounge of a city school - he seemed to think that's what coffee should taste like), while i spilled my lonely and empty heart to him....he was silent but paying attention, and listened to me through jags of tears and flair ups of anger that came from a deep hurt that he knew so well himself...he hugged me and told me that if someone couldn't love me for me and that they only wanted a part of me or two parts of me that were "perfect" and the rest was just something that needed drastic change or replacement altogether, then in fact, they should have ordered a pizza because that is the only time you can get what you want and only use the parts of it you like and discard the rest...the fact is, you can't love a pizza....but a person is not a pizza, and all the parts are worth loving....i thought it was funny when he compared someone not loving me for some reason or another to me being or not being a pizza....it made me laugh...which lightened my heart which i had thought was almost empty by then.....

when i left o'dell that night, i stopped and had pizza....the fact was, i didn't want pizza, so i ordered the two slices i thought i might make myself eat, but in the end, there was no part of that pizza i wanted and i threw it away before i got to my apartment....and that was when i realized how simple and true o'dell's words were....i am far too delicious and good for someone not to want all of me, yet alone for anyone to even try to throw part of me away....and i wasn't hungry anymore, somehow my soul was fed for the night and i was sated....and smiling....and i got home and didn't cry when i went to bed right away....

that was the last time i saw o'dell. i sent him a holiday card, one of the handful that i'd made. i left him a voicemail on his mobile phone over the holidays thinking he'd gone back to see his family down south as he loved to do for every holiday...i didn't hear back from him and put him on my list of folks to call in the new year....the last time i saw o'dell, i was begging for his help and he didn't ask for a single thing in return....he hugged me goodbye....i think my hugging him back was halfhearted and exhausted at best...i never got to tell him how much he meant to me and how much i loved him for being my friend....i never got around to asking him how school was or how his life was going and had he been dating anyone new....i was so selfish and he was so much himself that for that night it was ok....

yesterday, i called his school and told them i was a friend who'd known him forever and hadn't been able to reach him, but could they give him a message for me....and they told me that they were sorry, but he had passed away....the lady on the phone didn't have all the details to share with me, but she told me he didn't show up for work the entire week before the christmas holiday and he didn't call in sick --- o'dell missed only 1 week of school his entire career because he had a death in the family and had to be out of town --- the school finally sent someone to his apartment and with the help of the police, they finally got in and found him dead....o'dell died of an overdose - someone left him alone in his apartment, dead or dying, and didn't even have the courage to call 911....o'dell would have had that person stand infront of his entire classroom and explain why that would be wrong to do and how things might have been different if they had only made an anonymous call for help before leaving....o'dell's death might not have been completely in vain because atleast then his students would have seen the value of a human life taken from them and perhaps more, they would have had the idea reinforced that hurting others and themselves with drugs or weapons is wrong....after all, o'dell was a grown man and made grown up choices that he dealt with....but his choices were never to be repeated by his kids....if he told you to do something, it didn't matter if he did it or not, he told you to do it right and ignore all other influences....do as i say, not as i do....o'dell you taught me so many things, about myself, about friends, about life and suddenly about yourself and about death...i wish you were here.....i don't know where you are given my discontent with man, with cities and with god right now, but wherever you are, i know there are children being guided along to a better place and there is definitely a brighter light in the heavens because i assume you must be up there...i know the streets of my city are darker without you here and my heart has dimmed with the loss and the inability to help you not get hurt....

goodbye o'dell - i love you and hope i will see you again whenever my time here is over, but don't sit around waiting for me because i'm not rushing to meet you, this is one time i'm going to have to make you wait, and i have no idea just how long i'll be, but i'm sure that you'll understand if i run late in finding you - but this time my friend, you will just have to wait.....

today is day 23 without a cigarette...2 weeks without a phone call....

some things in life will never be able to be understood...atleast by me....

if you meet someone, love them, like them or loathe them, why would you ever waste your time in misleading them? if you love them, tell them and let it be, or try to be, whatever it may be or may become....if you like them, talk to them and support them in whatever way they may need or however you are able without short changing yourself or deluding yourself into thinking that you will be getting something greater in return by giving so much of yourself away - you are selfish and cheating yourself if that is how you "like" someone else....if you loathe them, don't bait them or give them any false sense of hope for a love or a friendship that you neither want nor will put out for them....that is downright hurtful and wrong on so many levels that no one will ever even understand how much damage it can do to the other party...that is until that other party is yourself.....

i am saddened for having liked many people and found out that friends are not the same as acquaintances....i have thousands of acquaintances but not a single one of them will ever be there when i need a friend, i know because i've got almost no friends to speak or, yet alone write of, anymore and i've needed a friend for a long time now....

there have been a few people that i have loved in the last few years....it has only been selfish in the way that i would hope by loving and giving of myself without asking or expecting anything in return, i may have been given respect and perhaps even real love....what i have been given is a handful of empty words, a string of broken promises and a welcome mat covered in bullshit from people that have walked right over me on their way to who or what they truly wanted....it has not been me, i have merely been convenient and perhaps a beacon in a dark night for a few lonely souls that wanted to keep on sailing past....most recently, that has happened and love turned to loss and loss turned to longing and longing turned to lipservice and lipservice is going to turn to loathing....and loathing almost always turns in on itself and brings me down to fear....i am afraid that i will not love again....

can you beleive i haven't had a cig in 18 days and counting?

sometimes when the clock strikes midnight, and the entire world shifts into a new time zone, even as i cling to life as i know it, all the hardest to avoid vices are so easy to walk away from....i can quit smoking...i can quit wanting....i can quit joking...but somehow, i can't quit needing a hug and friend or two to share my life with on a daily basis....why is it so hard to meet people as a grown up and not scare the hell out of them with the intensity and honesty of who i am and where i am in life?

i was so busy calling everyone i know to share my great news that i forgot to put it on the blog for all of you read.....

picture it if you can, october 2002, a phone call from the hospital to tell me that really serious tests i'd had six months earlier had been mis-transcribed while they filled in my g.i. chart history....

32 polyps removed during an unexpected stay in the hospital( for non-relevant reasons) had been biopsied. i was informed that while it was a high number and i was a particularly young age for such a polyp colony, it is also common for younger men and women to not have any reason to have their intestines, colon and so forth delved into yet alone searched by floodlamp and hidden camera) while a team of prissy nursing students and over confident first year residents sit watching from above on a wide screen tv in the surgical ampitheater....all said and done, the results had come back as all 32 polyps being benign and needing no further follow up other than a full g. i. series every 12 months due to my crohn's disease....

fast forward...suddenly, a beautiful and temperate october afternoon, i got a call from my friend and doctor, armando caccierelli who was the head of the g.i. area where i went for crohns treatment...he told me it was urgent that i get in to his office that day if possible as he needed to sit down with me and discuss the seriousness of something that had happened somewhere along the line between surgical theater and lab transcription folks and that idyllic indian summer day i was so far living up in my own meager and somewhat mild way....

when i got to his office several hours later, i could have been knocked over with a feather boa....he explained the error and subsequent consequences of the error in my polyp count and biopsy transcription...where i was told 32 were benign and end of story, in fact, 3 were MALIGNANT and due to the lapse of time and the area of my colon (about 14 - 17 inches in from the end of the road, so to speak), this loss of time for treatment was more than dangerous, it was potentially deadly....i was told that i would be having surgery 3 days from that exact day, armando had one of his friends from mt. sinai offer his assistance as the lead if armando would be his second in charge for the potentially radical and physically invasive procedure....

i was numb. i was not scared. i have cancer....i have colon cancer....i am 34 years old on this day and suddenly i'm told i may not live until next month for my 35th birthday because of cancer and human error....i did not cry....i did not scream....i did not have time to register what exactly this would mean and i did not have time to die....i did not have time to find mom and jim in wyoming and i needed them to be here. i did not have time to have a will drafted and filed....i did not think i would soon be so sick that fear would be secondary to wanting to be dead....i did not know that within months, i'd be so thin that people would want to help me with my addictions which were actually chemo and radiation....i did not know that chemo can send you flying on a delirious and acid like trip....i did not know that radiation is normally aimed only at the area where you are being treated...i did not know that my 3 MALIGNANT growths had had enough time to grow from individual areas ranging from 3 - 5 mm each into one intersected growth of over 17 mm....i did not know that when i told them to just perform the colostomy procedure while i was in that my friend, the doctor would hug me....and tell me that the difference between being brave and being alive is being healthy enough to make an informed decision when there is so much life to live still and so little happiness with knee jerk bravado....

the story goes on, but i will not bore you...it is pretty similar to most cancer patients, but one thing you should know is that colon cancer is predominantly a retirement age disease, with most cases occurring after the age of 62....younger patients, in the 40 and under range, have only a 17% survival rate because they so seldom have a reason to have any type of invasive testing done that area until they either experience such severe pain or horrible symptoms that they are rushed to the e.r. and generally don't last for many weeks after that trip to the hospital since the disease will have probably run it's course and crossed into the organs and other horrible things....

fast forward 5 years....i lost my home. i lost my possessions...i lost my friends...i lost my sanity...i lost my pride...i lost my youth...i lost my dreams...i lost my hope....i lost my will to live....i lost my mind (literally in 3 small areas, perhaps chemo related...) i lost my hair but i'm happy to announce it's come back to visit...i mean it's now on my back but i can visit it by turning and looking in a mirror on occasion....

i did not lose my family...i did not lose my smile...i did not lose my ability to step beyond my own problems to help someone else with theirs - they call that escapism....i did not hurt anyone....i did not make any promises i couldn't keep. i did not forget i was sick for a minute. i did not live. i did not ignore death, but found that i had embraced it long ago....in fact, i recalled every day for the last five years that when we are born we come into life screaming while the world around us is joyous with music and dancing but when we die, the world beats its breast at the great injustice suffered by dying so young, yet dying brings us full circle into our own moment of joyous music and peace....i did not lose my sense of humor....god makes me laugh - she's a funny guy!

friday night, my doctor called while he was driving home for the weekend. i have had ongoing extensive, invasive and not so comfortable tests done nearly every week since november 1, 2007...i had been unable to find a single result from any source which leading up to my december 24th anniversary for having finished chemo and radiation was making me a bit paranoid....december 24th came and went with no test results....

december 24th should have been a major milestone...it was 5 years....i was sick the entire month of december and thought it was cancer related...december 25th i sat alone in my apartment for christmas and i cried because i felt that i'd been beaten and would finally have to admit i've lost this battle with an enemy that is part of my own body....new years came and went. i slept through it and barely left my apartment, i had nowhere to go and no one to see and no will to seek any opportunities out....the grim reaper is less than cooperative when you really have your life in line for his convenience....

i am officially, a cancer SURVIVOR....i am 5 years clean of colon cancer....i am 100% cancer free....if i wasn't pickled by chemo and radiation, i'd probably be labeled organic....i am now going to live....and i must say....i'll be damned if i'm going to let life and those who run it and those who administer it stop my making up for the life i've already lost....i will never live the last 5 years again....i hope to never revisit much of the last five years again...but i am going to wear my badge of survival as a license to live for all the world to see....i can't believe that i've been from the top of the world with education, careers, travels, loves and possessions, yet, only when the planet took a sudden shift, and made a quarter turn to the right without me, did i learn that by losing everything that ever mattered in the world to me, i not only gained strength and wisdom, but i got every single thing that will ever truly matter back while i was sleeping at some point...you see, a job is good, money would be nice, tailored clothing is pretty and who doesn't like to be at home in their own cozy nest, yet when everything is dark and you are alone, you find that no one has ever made wishes come true with magic....wishes and dreams and hopes and love and life and anything you will ever truly want or need or cherish beyond belief, is simply right there...it's in your heart and in your soul, and no one can take that away from you for any price or any reason....you might give your heart or share your hope and if you're truly blessed even further, you may share you life, but these things that are so valuable and undeniably precious only increase as you possessions for the simple act of giving and sharing them with others.....

i am so blessed and i am so thankful to the universe that has given me everything i could ever need to survive, including all those fucked up lessons on how to do without, because today, i sit in tears while i share this with you, i know that my life has more beauty, love, compassion and hope than any one person could probably realize is possible....

sometimes life and art are as one and adults become their inner child again.....

you are like puppy

when i see you

thru a window

i want to bring you home

with me

again and again.

somehow

every wet sloppy kiss

makes me love you

more and more.

you deserve a treat....

let's go for a walk.

oh this year is going to be so long...why do we always need a year built on 365 days?

i think if barack or hillary, or heck even mccain or romney win the next election, they need to change us onto an american calendar instead of the roman calendar that is oh so blah and accepted as the universal standard (that is unless you're chinese or jew....then you count your chickens when they hatch as a year or a monkey or whatever, and the jews. good grief, are they even up to the disco era of the 1970's yet on their offbeat calendar? thank goodness for manashevitz wine....atleast you can nosh and slosh while waiting for the era of poly blend and tie dye to end and the era of shoulder pads and even longer dreidel curls and yarmalukes of neon green to hit the pages of Hasid Today Magazine...kind of like highlights for children, only it's for jews, children wouldn't be caught dead reading it and the bazooka joe comics from the back once coveted by kids the world round would be replaced a stick figure named mordachi awaiting the messiah...high art and drama at it's lowest ethnic ebb....)

my personal suggestion would be a very slight but easily managed change which would segment a year into periods of 50 days....yeah the months would be off and who cares, most of them suck rocks anyway...and with seven years to ever current one of the accepted variety, perhaps we'd get that next idiot out of the white house in a mere 400 days instead of the more acceptable version of when hell freezes over....

that said...maybe i'm cranky because it's been 11 days since i've had a gosh darn cigarette and dagnabbit, so far, no one has been injured but in all fairness, i've been afraid to really stray from the apartment for fear of having a panic attic or an anxiety meltdown or perhaps a bit of a mental migration from sane to not....thus necessatating smoking 10 butts all at the same time to hit my system with oft missed rush of nicotine which we all know does make the world go round....

today i think i will buy some of the cheap cigs that i have never smoked because they taste like ass....this is of course to help dimish, disguise or dissolve the owe so unpleasant odor bombarding my entire kitchen as the house of mouse has become the melting mouse mortuary....trouble being all that poison that they finished 4 months ago seems to have had it's desired affect and i've not seen hide, hair or turd of a mouse in atleast 3 months now...unfortunately they are slow to explode and they had plenty of time to be pissed about they internal ruptures and excessive ability to dissolve while walking the floor of the place....so they've obviously hidden where i'm unable to find them, yet alone reach or neutralize them....i.e. i think under the flooring of my new kitchen cabinets....i've asked anyone i know to help me figure out how to get rid of that oh so summery scent of a scene right from "deliver me from a trailer in wyoming" and all to no avail...if the scent continues to fester and apparantly spread (what the hell, are they melting in there thus allowing the scent to continuously roll further around the kitchen? i'll be a monkeys uncle!) i'm about ready to rip out the cabinets but i'm afraid of what i'll find if i do so....live with the spreading and oh so liquid stench of melting mice? or stay in my bedroom and eat take out in front of the window where the fresh air comes in regardless of opening or closing the glass....

any suggestions?