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 I’ll cut to the chase: I got a CT scan last week of my lymph nodes & thorax (apparently in a haunted scanner), and the oncologist reviewed them & some rapid bloodwork with me on Monday. She confirmed that my CLL is Stage Zero and told me to come back in 6 months for bloodwork to see if anything has changed (or earlier if I develop symptoms, which is a great thing to tell a neurotic). If my numbers stay in spec, I should keep to that semiannual bloodwork schedule for, um, the rest of my life.
Which is to say, I got The Best Bad News.
I thought about the other people in the waiting room, and the old guy in the exam room next to me, whom I overheard mentioning he had his 11th round of chemo coming up, and I marveled over how blessed/lucky I am.
When I was talking to a friend yesterday (on a business call) he said I sounded like I was handling everything pretty well. I told him, "Oh, no: the moment I stop talking it all goes black, and it's pretty obvious to me that I'm going to need counseling, but I'm glad I sound good." He laughed, but is a close enough friend to know I wasn't joking.
How are you? You know these snippets aren't the full picture, right?
And now, 20 Things I like or am otherwise Going Through:
 1) I posted Episode #445 of the Virtual Memories Show, featuring a conversation with writer Heather Cass White about her wonderful new book, Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life (FSG). We get into what it means to be a reader, how we can lose ourselves & find ourselves in books, how this book gestated for decades while she was working on her scholarship of Marianne Moore, how she snagged the title from a line by Milton (and how promiscuously we should read the word “promiscuously”), and more! Give it a listen & go read Books Promiscuously Read!
2) Last week, I posted a conversation with writer Jonathan Baylis to celebrate the latest issue of his autobio comics series, So Buttons. We talk about how he found a home in the Pekar mode, the artists he’s hoping to work with, how NYU film school informed his storytelling style, what it feels like being a subject in his wife’s monologues (she’s comedian Ophira Eisenberg), and more! Give it a listen & pick up the new So Buttons
3) You can find every episode of my Virtual Memories Show at my site, and via iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, TuneIn, Podbean, or on your podcatcher of choice by plugging in the RSS feed
4) My thanks to everyone who came up with viable suggestions for this week's show. Heather was the guest I was hoping to get lined up, and her publicist delivered a few hours after last week's e-mail went out. You guys offered up some great prospects & now they're all part of The Great Spreadsheet That Knows All
5) When I shared The Best Bad News with you all a few weeks ago, Mark Dery sent me the piece he wrote in 2012 about his rare cancer, subsequent complications from surgery, and what illness (esp cancer) tells us about ourselves. It's more powerful than anything I could write
6) I'm planning a 2-part podcast this summer with some of the people involved in the Philip Roth Personal Library at the Newark Public Library, so I really enjoyed this interview Steven Heller (2018, 2019, 2020) did with the library's designer, Jonathan Alger
7) This WSJ article on the transition to electric cars is really interesting (to me): it's about the disruption of labor within car companies (all the internal combustion engine people are headed to the doors) and the potential annihilation of many parts manufacturers who make components that electric cars don't use
8) Single funniest line in any movie ever is in Munich, when Eric Bana questions why of all Israelis has been put in charge of hunting down the Olympic terrorists, and Geoffrey Rush tells the 6'2" Croatian-Australian Adonis, "Because you are everyman." Here's an interview with Bana
9) Wowzers! A whole bunch of my past pod-guests won Eisner Awards at Comic-Con International last weekend! Congrats to Mimi Pond, Peter Bagge, Derf Backderf & Adrian Tomine, as well as Francoise Mouly & Scott McCloud for their Hall of Fame inductions! (Here's Derf's acceptance speech)
10) Charif Majdalani wrote an amazing piece about the big explosion in Beirut from last year (& go read his novel Moving the Palace (New Vessel Press))
11) Here are some gorgeous drawings from Christoph Niemann of his recent travels
12) For a month now, my only non-food expenditures have been art supplies (except for those Patrick Leigh Fermor books from the NYRB sale over July 4th weekend, and the Marianne Moore poetry collection that Heather Cass White edited). No books, no clothes, no running gear, no tech. I don’t even browse. It's a little strange not to be expecting any packages anymore, and to think of what I already have and not what's coming as a gift. Liberating, I suppose, in terms of stepping off the gratification treadmill, not manufacturing wants. I wonder how long it'll last, and how much this experience is rewiring me. After my father recovered from bypass surgery ~15 years ago, he got fixated on buying watches on eBay. He said he didn't understand why, but I figured it was a way of compensating for his damaged ticker. Lord knows what someone will make of the new habits & obsessions I develop in this nuova vita of mine.
13) I haven't watched that Bourdain documentary, but here's an interesting take on it all by Maria Bustillos
14) Thane Rosenbaum laments the death of Jackie Mason (JM was my wife's first celebrity sighting after she moved to NYC)
15) Profile of Danny Wilson (and their songwriter, Gary Clark), their first album, and their biggest single, Mary's Prayer (which, as I've said, entered my soul when I was ~17 and never left)
16) I hope these suicide prediction devices come with a warranty
17) Spooky haunted K-Mart of Astor Place
 18) I made art every day. Some of it was terrible, but I don't beat myself up about that. I did a few more drawings of people, but I haven't figure out how to blend skin tones in watercolor yet. Here's a sketch I did of Jason Jules, and a watercolor of Yukio Akamine; I can only hope for their forgiveness. The picture here is from a planter at the end of the driveway of one our neighbors around the corner. There's a flagpole next to that flying the stars & stripes and a [The Former Guy] 2020 flag below that. I got a CD with all the images from last week's CT scan, and I'll probably make some art out of those at some point
19) I post my drawings & watercolors at Instagram & Twitter, but it's easier to check 'em all out in this Flickr album
20) Man, that lat injury or whatever it is keeps lingering, and I've done zero exercise for 12 days, which is driving me a little batty, although of course that's intermixed with all the other things that are driving me batty. I haven't seen my doctor about it yet because, again, All The Other Stuff, but if it persists and keeps me from running, I'll make an appointment
Send me an e-mail, write me a letter or a postcard, or call my Google Voice # (973) 869-9659 and leave a message about what you like or don't like about the podcast, who you want to hear me record with, what book-movie-music-comic-series you think my audience should check out, and maybe share your experiences with me or otherwise give me encouragement about my health.
See you next week.
Touch me, I'm trying to see inside your soul, I've got this thing, I want to make a correction, I'm not like this all the time,
Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
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