it’s december….here comes The Reckoning
hola comrades.
well, here it is, the reckoning.
the book is out, the musical is closed up (for now), the book tour is over, and anthony is heading into the hospital on tuesday for his bone marrow transplant.
they’re giving him a 40% chance, but i like to think it’s more like an 80% chance because he’s a stubborn motherfucker who refuses to die ever (if you want to send him some love, he’s at @DrAMartignetti on twitter and on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/camstories. even better, go listen to his stories for free online. you’ll make him happy: http://www.camstories.net/).
it’s winter in boston, which is not the favorite. it’s The Great Abide. i’ll stick around this joint until the cancer nails him to the ground or he leaves the hospital with a new batch of blood coursing through his veins, giving him a nice ol’ second shot at this sad veil of tears. he’ll be in the iso-ward over christmas. i imagine me and his wife laura and all his friends will gather around him wearing ebola-style suits and singing christmas carols. dancing boys. it’ll be the bomb.
this is the reckoning.
neil is about a four-hour drive away in upstate new york, teaching at Bard (he’s doing an “adapting shakespeare” class” and loving it). it’s far enough away that it might as well be london. when he comes to boston to do the Great Abide with me, we aren’t sure where we’re going to live yet. i think we’ll couchsurf at our friends’ houses while i continue tearing apart my apartment. it’s 3:30 pm and almost pitch black outside.
yesterday i unpacked my tour suitcases. i didn’t actually put my laundry on. it’s all in the bathtub.
i’ll do that tonight.
i made a list of things to do that covers 16 (mostly blank) pages.
i need to clean my whole apartment, so that other people can more easily live in it and have access to surfaces and not have to literally face my dirty underwear.
i have not vacuumed my apartment since 2009.
i need to figure out what to do with all the stuff that only i feel the value of. there’s got to be a german word for that.
wiederwertvollsachenerkennungskeit?
i need to finally archive all my tapes.
i need to finally answer all the “ask amandas” sitting in my inbox (there are currently 700 questions).
i need to plug up the nineteen leaks in my finances and business life.
i need to finally clean my computer of ten years worth of un/disorganized files.
i need to make a solid inventory of the things i own for insurance claims.
i need to decide where i’m going to live.
i need to throw away all those old white face pancake applicators.
they are cracking like old cookies.
where there is angst, there will be blood.
i need to…fix….a lot of things.
it’s time.
this is the reckoning.
i’m seeing positivity swirling all around me…the mass mosaic that finally came our way, and i’m stunned and awed by the people who are offering to gift/re-gift/send copies of the book to people who are asking for it. it’s so fucking meta, given the subject of the book. a guy the other day bought twenty copies for people. a woman offered to send the book to anyone who had children who were willing to hand-make her a gift to put under her tree, which is empty, because she’s older and all her friend are dead (direct quote. you’ve got to love amandalanda). and you just want to weep.
and i’m seeing negativity swirling all around me. i see it on the net, i see it in my backyard, i saw it on tour, i saw it over dinner….the fear and the hate and the anger.
mostly the fear. it always comes to the fore this time of year. there’s the darker deeper things, the flattened real-not-real shadows nailed against the ceiling, waving hello.
theres a piano to play and an accordion to play and songs lying in fetal wait in my head, but not yet.
and to tell you the truth: i don’t really want to do the laundry, or deal with christmas, or throw out old toothpaste tubes, or find a place to live, or fix my leaking taxes.
i also don’t want my friend to die
and this is the reckoning
see you tonight
i’ll be by the fire
bring a bottle of wine
xxx
afp
p.s. the new BOOK website is up. more soon, but if you want….while we’re fixing little links….go peek. leave feedback in comments, esp if you find anything broken:
