linear acceleration

I’m in Victoria, B.C., with my mom. We’re here because a second biopsy of her jaw yielded a positive diagnosis: squamous cell carcinoma. She just completed a series of ten radiation therapy treatments, or fractionations, in the hopes of shrinking the tumor. Left unchecked, the cancer would most likely eat into her jawbone, resulting in debilitating pain. Of course, there was a chance that the radiation would also result in debilitating pain caused by osteoradionecrosis, or bone death. So there you go. Old age is not for the faint of heart.

On the first day she was brought into a dark and cavernous room called the Simulator. Isolated in the center was a table on a dais, where they laid her, face up. A technician stood over a stainless steel vat of hot water, cooking a square sheet of white plastic mesh. Once the plastic was hot and malleable, they placed it across mom’s face, stretching and pressing it around the contours of her nose and jaw, over her cheekbones and into her eye sockets, pulling it down around her ears until eventually it reached the table, where it was screwed down and left to harden. A network of red laser beams, crisscrossed the darkened room, mapping out the paths the x-rays would take. Once the cancerous target had been sited, the mask was gridded off with felt markers and removed.

From here, we were taken to a treatment room—this being the Pacific Northwest, all the radiation rooms are given the names of trees, and we were assigned to Fir, which was next to Arbutus. Fir is the home of Linac, or the linear accelerator, which is a large L-shaped machine that generates x-rays and aims them at the tumor site. Once a day, for ten days, mom's head was buckled down onto the table and 300 centigrays (CGYs) of precisely directed photon x-rays beamed from two angles into her jaw.

The treatments themselves were quick and painless. The skin around the tumor site got a little bit inflamed, and she had some trouble swallowing, but the side effects were minor, consisting primarily of intense fatigue, loss of appetite, and general debilitation and lethargy. The trick was to keep her awake long enough to eat, but she was losing weight and getting weaker and weaker. After a week or so, she could barely walk the ten steps from the bedroom to the bathroom.

That's when we thought we were losing her. Her pulse was erratic, and she was having trouble breathing. I heard fluid in her lungs. She was fretful, the way people get when they are actively dying. She would stare wide-eyed at the white ceiling, and from time to time she’d laugh and point upwards, gesturing wildly. She was trying to tell me something, or talk to someone, but she’d stopped using words I could understand. I could tell she didn't recognize me. Sometimes she'd start speaking in Japanese. She was sleeping about twenty-three hours a day. But somehow she managed to go on.

Over the course of the treatment and the weeks that followed, she had a couple of bad dips like this, but each time she'd stabilize again. Finally, one night as I was tucking her in, I gave her a kiss on the forehead.

"Good night, my little sweetie pie...," I said.

She looked up at me for the longest time searching my face. Finally she smiled.

"Good night, big pie," she said.

That's when I knew she was going to be alright.

It's been a month since she started the radiation treatments and she is back on her feet, walking in the park, climbing stairs, enjoying her food, and gaining weight again. The radiation treatment was palliative and never meant to cure the cancer, but rather just to control its metastasis, and it has succeeded in doing this. The tumor is still there, but it has shrunk dramatically. Mom rarely notices it, and because of her Alzheimer's, she has no memory of being sick at all, which seems just fine to me.

mom

So, my mother said to me, the other day, “When I die, are you going to start renting out this house to other people?” She is staying in a little house down the driveway from ours.

“I haven’t thought about it,” I replied, hedging. Obviously I don’t like it when she talks about dying.

“Well, you should take the washer dryer up to your house before you rent it to anyone.”

“The washing machine…?”

“Yes," she said. "I don’t know why you put it in this house. You have to come all the way down here every time you want to do your laundry.”

“We put it down here so we could all share....” We put it down here so we’d have another excuse to hang out with you. We put it down here because we are afraid you’ll become bedridden and incontinent.

“Well," she said, "that’s very nice of you, but after I die I don’t want to have to worry about you not having a washer dryer.”

“Mom,” I told her. “Please.” She’s had Alzheimer’s since the mid 1990’s, she’s just been diagnosed with what looks like jaw cancer, and she’s eighty-nine years old. She has enough on her mind without worrying about our laundry.

“So you’ll take it back up to your house?”

“Mom, when you die, I’m burying the washer dryer with you.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I don’t want to have to worry about your dirty clothes when you’re in heaven.” (I don’t really believe in heaven, and neither does she, but I know she will humor me.)

“Clothes don’t get dirty in heaven,” she said, staring at a tall Douglas fir outside the window. “Clothes are always clean in heaven.”

“They are?”

“Yes. They have angels there who do all the laundry. Now, isn’t that a lovely tree? What kind of tree is that?”

mom in trees

op ed

Here is an Op Ed essay that I wrote for the New York Times. I got a very kind email from the editor turning it down on the grounds that the Op Ed page does not currently accept fiction. Oh well.

To the Editor,

I would like to state an opinion in response to the growing debate over genetically modified crops, but before I go any further, I must speak straight and tell the whole truth about myself.

I am a retired potato farmer from Liberty Falls, Idaho, but I am not real. I am a fictional character in a novel. I know that it is unusual (and mighty presumptuous) for a fictional character in a novel to have strong political opinions, never mind to try to contribute one to the country’s “newspaper of record.” However, the fictionalized (as many would call it) nature of our current administration’s claim to office, the steady stream of invention issuing from the press rooms of our nation’s capital, and finally the imaginary characters and dramatized scenes that have recently appeared in the general media and even in these distinguished pages, all lead me to believe that since nobody knows what the truth is anymore, I might as well try my hand at telling it.

So here goes:

1. The argument that GMO crops are necessary to solve world hunger is a fiction designed by corporate PR offices to overcome consumer resistance to transgenic food, sell patented and lucrative seed to skeptical farmers, and further expand and strengthen US trade in developing countries. As such, this argument is unconscionable.

2. There is no shortage of food that could be offered to nations in need. Take potatoes, for example. In 2001, overproduction drove potato prices so low that desperate spud farmers in Idaho chose to dump 410 million pounds of potatoes, plowing them back into the ground to drive up prices and make room to store the next year’s crops. Similar overproduction of corn, wheat, milk, and most of the staples needed to provide nutrition to starving people occurs regularly, and what is not dumped here is dumped abroad. Oxfam, the London-based relief organization, noted last year that the United States has been selling surplus wheat on world markets at prices 46% below the cost of production, and corn at 20% below costs.

3. The evidence that genetically modified crops are of agronomic benefit to anyone, other than the CEO’s and shareholders of the corporations that sell them, is marginal. The premium prices farmers pay for transgenic seed often outweigh the profit that may derive from increase in crop yield or savings in pest or weed control inputs.

4. Plants cross-pollinate and breed. Wherever GMO varieties are planted, there will be some degree of genetic pollution of native species, and the “novel” traits expressed are likely to be unexpected and possibly dangerous to local ecosystems. Gene flow is real, not a science fiction.

5. “Buffer” or containment zones to prevent gene flow are not effective or enforced, nor are the so-called “refuges” aimed at preventing pests from developing immunity to the bacterial pesticides spliced into some GMO crops. According to an article published in your newspaper on June 19, the Center for Science in the Public Interest issued a report stating that the biotech industry has been misreporting farmers’ compliance with E.P.A. standards governing the planting of GMO crops.

6. There have been no long term, government-mandated studies on the human health impact of GMOs, either in this country, or anywhere else.

Hearing me talk like this, you might think I was one of those liberal environmental types, which I’m not. However, I do find it mysterious that those people, who think that this earth and all its wonder was an accident, could treat nature with far more reverence and respect than those of us who believe it is God’s gift and creation.

And if your readers take issue with the idea of a character like me appearing in your newspaper, well, I guess I can understand that. As a fictional character, I have a high regard for reality. Novel creations belong in novels, not in nature, and on the page, not on the dinner plate.

Sincerely yours,
Lloyd Fuller
Potato Farmer (retired), Liberty Fall, Idaho
Character (fictional), “All Over Creation”

summer camp

Back from Zen camp. What an amazing thing it is, to sit perfectly still and in silence for sixteen hours a day. Total reboot of the system. Of course, you’re not just sitting. There’s some walking involved, and chanting, and eating, and meetings with the teacher, and even some physical work as well. In fact, it all seems quite busy, so much so that you start to wonder how you are ever going to manage to return to your civilian existence and fit in all the stuff that life demands.

The retreat takes place at a Church of Christ Bible camp on Samish Island, Washington, and the first thing you notice as you come up the drive are forty litle identical brown cabins, laid out in a perfectly symmetrical grid pattern on the flat green lawn. Each cabin is intended to hold four children and is equipped accordingly, with two sets of bunk beds (mattresses encased in plastic, just in case), a folding chair, a astebasket, and a broom. Since there are fewer than forty of us, each meditator has his or her own cabin. Our zendo, or meditation hall, is a basketball court, and my cushion was on the foul line just up from center court.

The camp overlooks a spectacular tidal basin and an improbably high, humped island to the west, beyond which the sun sets. There's a great blue heron rookery in the forest, just inland from the mud flats, and when the tide recedes, the birds are drawn from the treetops onto the shallows, where they stand on the gleaming mud, at dawn, or dusk, or under the moon, perfectly still, waiting for morsels of marine life to scurry by to catch and regurgitate to into the wide and waiting mouths of their fledglings.

In the forest, you know you are nearing the rookery by the ruckus the young birds make, a Jurassic cacophony, as dissonant as the fledglings are ungainly. They stick their necks out of the tattered nests and turn their beaks resolutely toward the sea. When one of the parent birds makes its pterodactyl-like approach, they screech with wild and uncontainable excitement. The fledglings are huge, and down below, on the forest floor, the underbrush is splattered white with excrement, and specks of feather and cottonwood down drift through the air.

In his daily dharma talk, our teacher, Norman Fischer, quotes a lovely Rilke poem, with a line that goes something like, “Even a bird must fall before she learns to fly.” This must be a startling thought, if you are a fledging heron.

Meanwhile, as I was sitting on my cushion, the world continued without me. Here’s a very encouraging update from the meat world, about McDonalds’ new anti-antibiotic policy, sent to me by Larry Haveson. Thanks, Larry. Let’s hope this is real.

And if you're interested in the Starbucks vs. Haidabucks story, there's more information and some cool pictures of the interior of the cafe here.

Thanks to everyone who sends email. It really helps.

corporations are people, too...

Have you ever wondered how corporations got their power? How they managed to co-opt the legal rights of persons? How they continue to grow, and in the process shape everything from the very public to the very private—from global politics, to environmental policy, to the french fry that you take into mouth, chew, and swallow to create the very cells of your body?

“Gangs of America: the Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy,” by Ted Nace, is the first comprehensive “people’s history of the corporation” from medieval times to the present, and does a really great job of educating even while it outrages. If you want to know more about the historical basis for current corporate misconduct and crimes against humanity, I highly recommend it. And the really cool thing is that while it will be in the bookstores next month, it is up online, and free to download now. That’s right. Free. This is not a corporate model.

Meanwhile, I’m checking out for a while. I’m going on a silent meditation retreat called a “sesshin,” which means a week without language. After all the touring, I need to reboot the brain. Check back at the end of the month for a report.

Another knee-jerk exercise in corporate control

Oliver told me about this story he heard on CBC radio the other day. Apparently Starbucks is threatening to sue a small aboriginal-owned restaurant in a remote part of British Columbia, claiming that the restaurant, named “HaidaBucks,” has violated the coffee giant’s trademark.

The restaurant owners have responded by saying that the “bucks” part of the name has nothing to do with coffee. “Aboriginal men were called bucks and we’re also Haidas,” said co-owner Darren Swanson. “The three aboriginal partners are all Haidas. That’s how we came up with the name.”

Starbucks claims that HaidaBucks is a “confusion variation” of their trademarked name, and they have stated their intent to take legal action to stop this confusion from occurring.

Of course, this is patently absurd. HaidaBucks is located in the Queen Charlotte Islands, in the small village of Masset, population 1500. “I couldn’t see a Starbucks opening here for another 150 years,” says Swanson. “It’s a pretty isolated place.”

And only an idiot would confuse the restaurant’s look or service with the international coffee conglomerate. Swanson describes HaidaBucks as having a longhouse façade, and it serves a variety of foods, including lasagna, chili, pizza, fresh soups, sub sandwiches, salads and changing daily specials, not to mention fresh baked Belgian chocolate brownies, pies, cheesecakes and cookies. Of course, the real problem might be the brand of coffee they serve: Seattle’s Best.

The restaurant, supported by the Haida Gwaii Community Futures, held its grand opening in 1999. “This was the first venture for all of us involved,” the owners stated, “and considering all the effort that went into it, things are working out really well.”

Spoken too soon.

“Lots of men out there are called Haida bucks. It’s kind of our pet name,” says Swanson. “It’s got nothing to do with them [Starbucks].”

Maybe it does or maybe it doesn't. Regardless, Swanson and his co-owners intend to fight. Best of luck to them and to all the little people.

curiosity and compassion

I'm thoroughly enjoying "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi. In it, she quotes a sentence from Nabokov—"curiosity is insubordination in its purest form." I love this. Curiosity is why I read and write. Curiosity is what compels me to track how meat winds up between the two halves of a bun, and how potatoes have co-evolved with human beings. Curiosity is why I want to read about genetic engineering and the workings of a seed. Why not? And if this is insubordination, well, that’s all the more reason to question like crazy.

Nafisi also writes about how novels are inherently anti-totalitarian because they encourage readers to practice empathy. A good novel will evoke empathy by inviting a reader into another's skin, and a compassionate reader will generally not become a fascist.

This gives me such pride and hope. These are the best reasons I can think of to read and write fiction.

homecoming

Okay, so clearly I still have a lot to learn about maintaining a weblog. “Maintaining” being the key word here. Sorry for the lapse.

I’m savoring my re-entry into domestic life after months on the road. Yet while it’s absolutely lovely to be home, transitions can be tricky. In recent years, I’ve gotten better at navigation, so it's not so bad now, but I remember back when I worked in film and television it was horrible.

It would start when the job was over, and you went home, exhausted but excited, dreaming of all the wonderful things you would do, now that your time was your own again…and maybe for a day or two you did enjoy your freedom before real life started creeping in, and there were bills to pay, and phone calls to answer, and the mail had piled up, and everyone was slightly annoyed at you for being away…and suddenly you found yourself kind of missing the suspended reality that passes for life on the film set. It's a lot simpler. You have a single mission. Few choices. A set schedule. Regular meals. A rigid hierarchy that governs relationships. The rules are clear. As long as you do your utmost, that's all that is required.

People in film and television like to compare working on a film to being in the military, which seems a bit self-indulgent, but hey. You can learn a lot about what it feels like to work on a film shoot by looking at “crisis” dramas like ER, or West Wing, or any of the cop or rescue shows. While they pretend to be about hospitals or law enforcement, they’re really about the lives of the crew members who are writing and filming the scripts.

The formula is always the same: a crew (team, squad, battalion) of people works together in a constant state of emergency, punctuated by a series of spiking crises, which they will succeed in resolving if they pull together and work as a team. These crises are followed by brief lulls, during which the heroes go home and makes a mess of their personal lives, but this is okay because the next crisis is always imminent and can be counted on to rescue them from all the banal, annoying, tedious complexity of domestic life maintenance.

Occasionally something nice will happen in their personal lives, which is okay, too, because it doesn’t have to last. The next crisis is always imminent and can be counted on rescue them from all the banal, annoying, tedious complexity...etc., etc..

It’s a narrative formula that sells. It pretty much describes what it’s like to work on a film or TV set, which in turn explains why TV producers are so addicted to it: They like making shows about themselves. It also pretty much describes why war, or any violent crisis, is such a successful political/mythic alternative to the annoying, tedious complexity of maintaining domestic stability.

fiction

These days I’ve been reading USA Today. It’s what shows up in front of my hotel room door every morning, no matter what city I’m in. On April 1, April Fool’s Day, the paper ran an article entitled, "Four-fifths of U.S. soybean crop is now bioengineered.” I had missed this article, but a kind woman in Wichita clipped it for me and gave it to me after the reading. I was glad she did.

In “All Over Creation,” my character Geek, a fervent environmental activist, rails, "Kids, did you know that more than half of the soybeans planted in America are genetically engineered? And a third of the corn too..."

When Geek said this, in 1999, the percentage was about 54%. The USA Today article reports, "A full 80% of this year's U.S. soybean will be planted in bioengineered seed, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey released Monday. Biotech corn plantings now comprise 38% of all corn planted in the USA. Biotech cotton is holding steady at approximately 70%."

As Geek's spokesperson out here in the "real" world, I'm pointing out these increases because he can't, in order to express his concerns and assuage his frustrations. The problem with being a fictional character in a novel is that, once written, you are fixed in time, and you have to rely on your author to stay current—an unsatisfactory situation all around, given how unreliable and out-of-touch writers of fiction can be.

Critics sometimes accuse novelists of putting our opinions into our characters’ mouths. These critics do not understand the creative process at all. As you can see, it is quite the opposite. I speak for Geek, not the other way around. Through me, Geek says things like,

“Genetic engineering is changing the semantics, the meaning of life itself. We’re trying to usurp the plant’s choice. To force alien words into the plant’s poem, but we’ve got a problem. We barely know the root language. Genetic grammar’s a mystery, and our engineers are just once click up the evolutionary ladder from a roomful of monkeys, typing random sonnets on a bank of typewriters.”

I do not believe this. Having spent time with a number of scientists doing this kind of research, I can tell you that they are nothing like a roomful of randomly typing monkeys. They are very smart, very concerned, very impassioned truthseekers, albeit a bit cut off from reality, which is what happens when you are a research scientist working in a lab. I don’t fault them for this. I’m a novelist, and I spend most of my time cut off from reality, too.

The difference between me and them, however, that as a novelist, the sequestration of my work from reality is unbreachable. No one is going to take my ideas, the results of my research, and actually make them manifest in the real world. And as a result, there’s a limit to the amount of damage I can do. There’s no such thing as “applied” fiction.

But wait. Clearly I’m wrong. Look at the Bush administration’s tales regarding Iraq, and the fantastic narratives that have been constructed by White House spin doctors. Isn’t this applied fiction at its most extreme? Apparently there is no limit at all to the damage that can be done.

hotels

William Gibson said that book tour is like a rock concert tour, without the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. True. However some big music label was holding a convention in the Toronto hotel where I was staying, and one of the bands was in the room next to mine. They started practicing around midnight. They wore headphones so I couldn’t hear the music part, for which I was grateful, but from time to time they burst into loud, random-seeming vocalization, like cats in heat, mating just beyond my headboard.

In New York’s SoHo Grand, a “pet friendly” hotel with no high-speed Internet connection, my room was covered with white dog hair. Next door, a pack of hysterical beasts barked all night, until I longed for the caterwauling of the night before.

When I arrived at the Radisson, in Lexington, Kentucky, the front desk was besieged. Through the crowd, I spotted the sign...welcoming a convention of English Bell Ringers to the Bluegrass State. 170 rooms, the desk clerk informed me, full of bell ringers.

I like Milwaukee. The hotel is quiet. But there is tension in the lobby. I ask around and discover that Julie Nixon Eisenhower is due to check in at any moment, and so, coincidentally, is Carl Bernstein, co-author of "All The President's Men." Hmmm. First the Toronto Star pressroom last week, and now this? Is the universe trying to communicate something? The Watergate theme is certainly in the air, and journalists are getting fired for telling the truth about the war. The concierge, I can see, is determined to keep the incoming parties apart, fearing the outbreak of a catfight.