Gaping Into The Unknown Like A Gobsmacked Terrier

Here I am, awash in the San Francisco Marina mujeres, purple Joan
Miro' necktie swinging on my neck in the sunlight. The white non-fat
foam left in the cover of my Starbucks cup reminds me of the original
version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" -- you know the one with
Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter. Sure, you remember. When the eerie
foam evaporated from the bodies hatched from seed pods, new but
soulless alien replicas emerged to take the place of the original
persons. Years later, in 1978, they remade the picture and filmed much
of it up the street in Pacific Heights. (I used to see the star,
Donald Sutherland, walking his wee bit of doggie in the early morning
hours in Alta Plaza Park. That image was alien enough -- a very tall
man walking what looked like the world's smallest dog.) It occurs to
me that many of these extraterrestrially-bred copy cat creatures --
with the vacant look in the eyes and no emotions -- actually stayed in
the neighborhood long after the cast and crew packed up and went home
to Hollywood. With designer running togs and Prada sunglasses, they
fit in so well here.

What could be more terrifying than a story about your loved ones
suddenly, without warning, turning into murderous strangers with no
feelings whatsoever? Wait a minute. I think they call that divorce.

7F66,0A22,17AF

There is something really beautiful about downtown San Francisco after
a rain storm, when the sidewalk brazenly shows its sloppy urban sheen.
There's a sense of freedom in the air as the skies clear. I get the
feeling that I can walk anywhere in the world because San Francisco is
still a gateway to the imagination.

This morning, I have been with yet another medical person. Today it
was at Glide's Drop-In Clinic. Mimi, the nurse practitioner (and
heroine of "La Boheme"), was very nice to me. She gave me drugs. I am
so easily pleased. She slid the prescription slowly and deliberately
across the table to my fingertips. She wet her lips. Well, maybe she
wet her lips. All right. All right. She most certainly did not wet her
lips. You can see I am making such an effort to make the clinical
appear lascivious. And Act One is dying. ... Mimi is also trying to
lower the beta-blocker intake -- gradually. I screwed up the courage
to ask her about the wisdom in mixing Coumadin (blood thinners) with
Viagra. She looked it up on her Palm Pilot. The only thing I'd worry
about is your low blood pressure, says she. Would Rudolfo discuss such
things with Mimi? Not in Act One. No, siree. Yesterday, the SFGH
doctor increased the thinners. This is the Dance of the Dosage. I do
appreciate how powerful these drugs are. I'm a little afraid of them.
Funny. I was never daunted by a tumbler of tequila in front of me.

I am still amazed by how good the music is here at Starbucks in the
Theater District. Remarkably good taste and non-fat milk, too. ... I
confess, I have had impure thoughts. Without even an effort at
restraint, I leered unapologetically at the sign at the cafe on Taylor
Street moments ago: "Steak & Eggs $6.95." The image brings visceral,
carnal notions. But, as an entree, it's an offering as remote to me as
my long-awaited invitation to a luau on Krakatoa from the Polynesian
Grass Skirt Society, written in the warm, personal hand of Uma
Thurman. Ah, but let's face it: There is always Dusty Springfield
singing on the house system about the son of a preacher man. There's a
passion in her piety as she tumbles through the hay. I am so easily
pleased. I would like to hear a radio station where the announcer
reads only from the Book of Revelation. With a laugh track. ... Get
this: I had a dream last night (or this a.m) where I was leading a
mandolin orchestra and we were hashing out one of my songs, "Basura,"
but someone kept insisting on Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight."
Oddly, at an art gallery next door to this Starbucks, I just noticed
the current show features photos by Pattie Boyd, the Carnaby Street
gal who captivated any number of Brit rock stars and inspired
(according to the sign in the window) Clapton's "Layla" ... George
Harrison's "Something" ... and Eric's "Wonderful Tonight." Just
another coincidence in my pathway, I suppose.

I notice more coincidences lately --- or maybe I'm just paying closer
attention.

Believe it or not, tomorrow night I anticipate a phone call from an
elderly man who wants to guide me into the rolling hills of the
California countryside for a day or two this week to get me out of the
city, er, The City. (It's Harold, the father of Father William, my
friend and spiritual advisor) This evokes that image of the solemn
medieval knight of the Crusades dutifully following the hooded,
black-shrouded figure of Death up the coastal hills in the Bergman
film, "The Seventh Seal."

I might be back by the weekend, if I get back at all. Inshallah,
anyway.

Here's Bellingham's breathless line on the trail, "Hey, wait for me,
Harold!"

90C6,2234,888DBy
the way, did you know that Sikhs are baptised in amrit, sugared water
stirred with a dagger? Of course you did.

I have a feeling that we will soon unravel this and other mysteries
that have baffled us for the longest time. Oddly, it is 70 degrees in
New York City. It's a bit like a wintry day today here in San
Francisco, though -- observed at our Polk Street listening post, The
Crepe House, that blares Arabic and Turkish music. By hookah or
crookah we will get through this day with success and self-assurance.
I hope something good happens to you -- as Benny Hill would say --
veddy, veddy soon.

Your fool on the Hill, Bellingham

The Tell Tale Heart Tells All

"Spring is here. Why doesn't my heart go dancing?" asked Lorenz Hart, the poet of Broadway. It seems that my heart is dancing all too erratically these days -- in the style of Buddy Rich, Joe Morello and Olatunji. Drummers of passion and their wild, unconventional meter. No more I will ever underestimate that solid 4/4 beat, a la Ringo Starr -- it is so reassuring. Little did I know I would spend much of the winter racing in my own medical Iditarod. Traipsing through the snow behind a team of huskies was one of the faraway thoughts I entertained whilst recently sequestered in St. Francis Hospital for seven days. "We wondered why you kept shouting, 'Mush! Mush!' in your sleep," the overnight nurse chuckled. I could have been ordering breakfast. With non-fat milk, of course.
Seven days in the hospital! Gee whiz, I went in for a simple chest X-ray. They wouldn't let me leave. If I weren't for Cow Hollow's Dr. Harvey Caplan, I would not have been convinced to get that chest X-ray. Little did I know I was tickling the dragon's tail.
Little did I know that getting sick can be a full-time job.
"This is a big deal," announced the ER doc as they stripped me of my civilian clothes.
They call the condition atrial fibrulation -- an irregular heartbeat that for months I unwisely and erroneously attributed to flu, bronchitis etc. It caused some blood clots in the heart, fluid on the lung and serious difficulty in breathing. They considered stopping my heart electrically, then resetting it, but the blood clots will have to clear up first. Meanwhile I have to hope they'll stay where they are. "You are at an elevated risk for a stroke," a grave-looking doctor averred. I thought of FDR's last words: "I have a terrific headache." Later for the jumper cables.
"I got arrythmia, I got music. I got my gal. Who could ask for anything more?"
But, listen, I'm better. I'm breathing, but not up to max. I am making headway on the San Francisco hills again, slowly. I'm carrying the Mac around again. Even turning on the power occasionally and writing on it. I also take nine or ten pills a day and will likely do so for a long time to come. The beta-blockers tend to run me in slow motion and tether me to the ground. Plus a low-down-no-salt-no-fat-no-meat-no-cheese-no-alcohol-no-trans-fats-no-innards-no-outtards-no-marbelized-marvels-of-the-sirloin-set-no-hooves-no-snouts-no-foreskins-no-leafy-greens-no-nothing-no-nonsense diet. Some people actually choose this regimen, if you can believe that. Spinach and leafy green veggies are prohibited. No bok choy in Mudville. I even like Brussel sprouts, if you can believe that. But now I know they will kill me. I can still hear my mother's voice: "Eat your Brussel sprouts. They won't kill you." They will thicken my blood, if you can believe that. I must avoid the nefarious, blood-curdling Vitamin K. No more early morning grazing in Alta Plaza Park for me. "Everything that your parents said was good for you," observed Woody Allen, "turns out to be bad for you. Milk, red meat, college." Wait a minute. Did the doctor say, "No alcohol"? You sure? My friend, Dr. Dean Ornish, recommends fish oil. Lots of it. Roll out the barrels. Even OPEC is impressed. Fish oil is more expensive than that light, sweet crude we hear so much about these days. I wonder. If you poured fish oil into your car's engine, would the car automatically head to the beach? Come to think of it, some of my favorite people are sweet and crude. Tenderness means a lot to me these days. For years, Dr. Dean has asked me, "Bruce, how's your heart?" I don't think he was restricting the topic to atria and ventricles. The heart can be a palpitating yet persistent hunter. Occasionally it is also resilient.
"If I were a pessimist," intones one doctor, "I'd say you'll be on blood thinners and beta-blockers in perpetuity. If I were an optimist, I'd say indefinitely." He must be a comedy writer for Savonarola. Dr. Albert Lee, the heart specialist at St. Francis, brought his own brand of crepe to hang: "If you don't do what we say, it's a heart transplant or death for you." Cheery fellow. But Dr. Lee, like all the folks I met at St. Francis, is a compassionate, dedicated healer. He even came in on the weekends to check on me. He has to use tough language to get through this "patient from hell" -- as I was once described. I seem to wear denial and dismissiveness on the sleeve of my hospital gown.

Here I am, banging on the computer in the cafeteria of San Francisco General Hospital where the reviews of the kitchen are mixed but the clientele's performance remains engaging. There is a bedraggled woman going from table to table, hustling spare change. This, I imagine, has replaced what's left of MediCal. Some disaffected denizens here mutter angrily to themselves then explode into a volcanic stream of racist invective until security finally shows up and puts the kabosh on the melee of the minute. Then the participants are simply forgotten to death. Like everyone else, they just want to be heard. They crave attention. John Prine comes to mind: "A bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down --- and won." Later, there's one noisy donnybrook by the first-floor elevators. I half expected a couple of game wardens to fire their tranquilizers darts at the two overheated perpetrators. All symptomatic, as the great Paddy Chayevsky wrote in The Hospital, of "the whole wounded madhouse of our times."
Back to the wizard of blood thinners at 10 a.m. to get the results of today's copious hemo drain. I ran into a pretty young doctor at the cash register who told me that for the patient, the Coumadin Clinic (purveyors of anti-coagulants) is "lots of work and requires plenty of vigilance." Some avocation for this meandering boulevardier who tends to measure life through the length of city blocks -- not milligrams.
I have been assigned an internist at yet another clinic in the Castro. It's all part of my new epidemiological travelogue throughout San Francisco. And the ennui that goes with the excursion. To die in Provence as did Dirk Bogarde sounds far more appealing. The doctor at the SFGH clinic maintained a less-than-sanguine tone the other day. Almost elegaic. Mournful. I managed to get there at 6:30 a.m. and oiled out in a breezy five-and-a-half hours. Yes, being sick has become a full-time job. And the hours are lousy. But the stakes are high. The night before, The Black Dog (Churchill's nickname for his life-long bouts of depression) deliriously kept up his restless and relentless pacing with his claws clattering across the hardwood floors. No matter. I don't have to go through this all alone. I'm in good hands. It's just a new adventure. Besides, all those great drummers who have been duty-bound to the off-beats and syncopation amid the unpredictable rhythm of life remind me there is a lot of listening and playing left to do.
Meanwhile I have decided to name my first-born daughter Lorazepam.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay," published by Council Oak Books. He is currently writing a musical comedy based on the Physician's Desk Reference.