SPIKE//

baseln:theantidote:kateoplis:

The next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary will never be printed due to internet’s impact on book sales. This, after 21 years of work by a team of 80 lexicographers.

I don’t think I’ve admitted this to many people, but for years I’ve been compiling a mental wedding registry.  I’m not engaged, nor have I ever been close to engaged.  But that hasn’t stopped my greedy capitalist mind from drooling over the idea of potential wedding presents.  Really, though, my list never grew very long, because I’m not especially interested in stuff.  In fact, I only ever got three items down on my list:  a set of nice knives, a sweet cast iron skillet, and a copy of the OED.  Looks like we can cross that last off the list, now.  Unless someone buys me an online subscription, of course…

My mother is in a multi-national clinical trial for a drug that may prevent metastasis in women with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer.  The drug proved promising in women with later-stage cancer, so there is a good chance it will be effective in cases like my mother’s.   What I find unbelievable is that although my mother is dutifully taking the experimental drugs every day, she is receiving no compensation.  Further, she (or her insurance) has to pay for the additional blood tests, EKGs, and other medical procedures necessitated by the experimental protocol.  

Of course I want the experimental drug to work, but there is a chance that it won’t; it could be ineffective or worse (the drug carries an extensive laundry list of ugly side effects, including heart failure and um, liver cancer).  What I’m saying is that my mother is putting herself at a serious risk taking this drug.  I think it’s shocking that she isn’t being compensated in any manner.  

For god’s sake, the participants in my thesis experiment are compensated.  I was compensated for my participation in a clinical trial for an HIV vaccine.  How is there no money to compensate people who are sick and paying for surgery, chemo drugs, white blood cell-replenishers, anti-nausea drugs, radiation… Really?  The drug trial can’t compensate these patients? Or at least partially cover the cost of their treatment while they participate in the trial?

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.