A Not-To-Do List

Tempting to claim that the past four weeks since my last post were an extended, restful vacation, and that would not be entirely untrue.

Nice weather has had me sitting outdoors overlooking the Plum Island Sound and laughing at the mainland when I wasn’t looking down into Herman Melville’s Mardi, by far his longest novel, an apparent attempt to channel Defoe, Dante, Swift, and Shakespeare all at once.

In the evenings I was usually captivated by the Jekyll & Hyde routine of both the Boston Red Sox and Boston Celtics, and there were a couple of weekend day trips. Also, I have had two columns in the local paper this month, though both were adaptations of previous blogs. Newburyport readers rather liked my former pot-head take on keeping pot shops away from downtown, and they are still nervously laughing at yesterday’s account of cracking jokes while a dermatologist cut a cyst from my throat.

A third sent in today was originally a detailed letter to Newburyport’s mayor about “weeding” at the public library which has made literature such as Mardi hard to find. It was prompted by the surprise resignation of the young head librarian just a year after her appointment. His reply, in its entirety: “Thanks for the email. I look forward to working through the Head Librarian search process.” Seeing no mention of the problem, I realized that I must make it public. So I haven’t been entirely unproductive or merely derivative, much less divorced from civic life.

All of which hardly explains a month-long lull, which brings me to the second minor surgery, this one on my back and infected, unlike the harmless cyst removed as a precaution and played for laughs in the operating room. Seriously, the good doctor asked me to stop, but I just couldn’t shut up. The blog is headlined “A Fan of Anesthesia,” but the better title might be “Doctor Resisted Suicide.”

Maybe it was an all-knowing God or maybe it was Karma or maybe it was just desserts, whatever those are, that I should be stricken with a second medical problem so soon–not so perilously placed, but far more annoying and with a week’s worth of antibiotics that I blame for my lethargy.

Then again, those pills may be the reason that I didn’t seem to be reading Mardi so much as hallucinating it. Might help you to know that the title is not the French word for Tuesday, but the Polynesian word for World. No marijuana or even Narragansett Lager required:

Robinson Crusoe is set on an island. So am I.

Shakespeare’s Tempest casts spells at the mainland. So do I.

Gulliver’s Travels describes weird people. Ever been to Plum Island?

Dante’s Inferno burns as Hell. Yes, I was still watching nightly news.

For all I know, whatever it was that a bug, most likely a tic, shot into my back was what made me think I was Prospero depending on Friday to keep the Yahoos away while my mind raced in circles. Call me Ishmael. Before I could get to the operating table, I kept hot towels on it, and when it seemed ready, I reached it with two fingers.

If you really want a description of what happened next, you’ll have to send a private message. Next day, the doctor said my shoulder appeared clean, but he took swabs for tests that all proved negative. I’m now healing without need of any bandage.

Expressing the most concern was my hiking friend up in Maine who wondered if a tic got me on our last stroll in the Wells Estuary. Seems doubtful that it would take me ten days to feel it, but she was insistent that I start taking precautions. I thanked her for the repellants she soon sent and will put them to use when hiking in woods and weeds and wetlands.

As for her advice to tuck my pants into my socks, I was so mortified by the image that saying “no” just didn’t seem to be enough. I started thinking of comparisons that would answer her metaphorically, as in I would do this before I do that.

Before long, I had a list:

Eat sushi

Own a cellphone

Vote Republican

Vote for a 3rd party without Ranked Choice Voting in place

Get a tattoo

Pierce my ear

Pierce my nose

Pierce anything

Order a glass of milk in a restaurant

Buy light beer

Drink carrot juice

Put sugar in coffee

Order decaf

Order tea

Open bottles with my teeth

Watch Fox News

Watch a “reality” TV show

Watch a sitcom

Use a plural pronoun for one otherwise identifiable person

State my preferred pronouns without my preferred adjectives: witty, handsome, charming

Use the word “grab” in place of “get”

Use “these ones” in place of “these”

Use “You guys” in place of “You” (plural)

Participate in karaoke

Line dance

Attend an opera by Wagner

Watch a film heavy in special effects

Read Ayn Rand

Listen to anyone who cites Ayn Rand

Allow anyone to use the word “appropriate” without asking what it means

Listen to opinions of anyone who says “I no longer follow (or read or watch) the news.”

Travel to India

Spend a getaway weekend in Amarillo, Texas

Move to Florida

Skydive

Make any dish with tofu as an ingredient

Buy cauliflower

Respond to any suggestion that includes the word “hurry”

Wear a watch

Wear stilettos

Wear any high heels

Take up fishing

Wear lederhosen

Wear a dunce cap

On second thought, I’m not sure about the dunce cap.  It’s pretty much the same thing as pants tucked into socks, except that it’s at the other end.

That applies not only to the classical, conical dunce cap, but to the modern red baseball caps–or, “feed caps” as they are known on the Great Plains–with four words lately taken to heart by the most gullible among us.

In either case, it wouldn’t matter which happened first. But in no case would I go into hiding for another four weeks to dodge the choice.

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