Happy Cancerversary
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Intro
“Were it to be the last
How infinite would be
What we did not suspect was marked
Our final interview.”—Emily Dickinson, #1164
Today’s my second cancerversary! It’s been two years since my first oncology consultation, in which I received The Best Bad News: dormant, non-aggressive Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) that’ll likely be something I die with, rather than of. I waited a week or so to tell you guys & my family (except for Amy, who was in on everything) while tests were out to confirm the non-aggressive part.
Two years in which nothing changed but everything. My health is the same — although I’ve taken the opportunity to get kinda jacked over the past 16 months — and while I’m not quite in Every Third Thought mode, I’m not not. I do feel my dyingness more, and more often, while finding ways to make more out of my life.
I talk/write too often about the 10-day period leading up to that first oncologist appointment, how I assumed I had 6 months left (at most), and and came to terms with that. How getting whiplashed with The Best Bad News left me with the challenge of living decades more (with, not of). Lest you think I’m dramatizing my case, please bear in mind that I know how lucky I am, and go listen to last week’s conversation with Joe Monninger about what it means to get much worse news than I did. (It’s a great episode.)
But what struck me this morning as I scribbled in my journal was how that 10-day interval was like the Days of Awe. It was as though I had My Own Private High Holidays to reflect on my life, to atone for (some of) my wrongs, to maybe quote Simple Minds and sanctify myself. To spend that period in a tension of contemplation and anxiety (which admittedly is like any other day in my life), pre-writing an obit to be pasted into the last page of the book of life.
I didn’t draw any further conclusions or allusions in my journal; Bendico needed walkies and we wound up going the full mile-plus around the block, instead of his usual around-the-corner-and-back.
And now, on with The Virtual Memories Show.
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 544 of The Virtual Memories Show feat. investigative journalist & longtime pal Mitchell Prothero (he’s the guy on the left in that pic), who joins the show to talk about his new podcast, GATEWAY: Cocaine, Murder, and Dirty Money in Europe (Project Brazen). We get into how the project evolved from his reporting on the global war on terror, how the cocaine trade mirrors the globalization wave, how Colombia’s piece deal led to mega-cartel consolidation, why his EU law enforcement sources did not want to talk about the cocaine trade, and whether the Netherlands trial of drug kingpin Ridouan Taghi reveals cracks in the security of the state itself. We also talk about the differences between writing for a podcast vs. writing for readers (like his reporting at VICE News), the strains of scheduling interviews with people under security detail, the changes in the media landscape over the course of his career, and his path through journalism, covering our days together in Annapolis to his time as a Capitol Hill reporter to stints in Afghanistan, Iraq, Serbia, and beyond. And we discuss what he misses about America and how living and reporting in Baltimore in the 1990s prepared him for pretty much any scenario he’s encountered since. Give it a listen! And go listen to GATEWAY
Last week, I posted Episode 543 of The Virtual Memories Show feat. writer and professor Joseph Monninger, who received a stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis only 3 days into his retirement in 2021, and has lived to write a new memoir, GOODBYE TO CLOCKS TICKING: How We Live While Dying (Steerforth). We talk about how he’s navigating life on borrowed time, his notion of legacy, and what he’s learned about impatience and regret. We get into the books that brought him solace, the comforts of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, how Wilder’s Our Town inspired the memoir’s title, and his desire to take the world in while he’s still in it. We also discuss the origins of his writing life, his Peace Corps stint and the big novels that he and the other volunteers traded, whether there are any books he wants to get to before he dies, what we each learned about oncology waiting room etiquette and the grace & goodwill of oncologists, the issue of assisted suicide, and a LOT more. Give it a listen and go read Goodbye To Clocks Ticking
Other recent episodes: Andrew Porter • Jonathan Papernick • Scott Samuelson • Brian Dillon
Links & Such
Before all the RIPs, HAPPY ONE-HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY to Jonah Kinigstein! Go listen to our 2015 and 2022 conversations, and wish him another century of making art.
RIP Julian Sands . . . RIP Frederic Forrest . . . RIP Sheldon Harnick . . . RIP Bobby Osborne . . .
Hayley Campbell wrote about the controversy at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.
Hugh Ryan wrote about the power of queer indifference.
Darryl Pinckney wrote about writing in dialect via this piece on the reissue of stories by Alston Anderson.
This super-mega-ultra-frequent-flyer has the same advice I give: never check a bag.
NJ STANDS ALONE (well, it actually sits in its car and lets someone else pump its gas)
This morning I thought, “It’s not that it all happens so fast but that it all happens so much,” but maybe that’s just the failed lyricist in me.
Current reading
The Black Locomotive - Rian Hughes
Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
Art
I put in the new drawing/drafting table and broke it in with an okay pencil sketch of George Orwell on his birthday. I haven’t done anything since, though. I’d like to go over this in ink, maybe some watercolor. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
I only did 4 days of my weights-yoga cycle, Saturday-Tuesday, because I spent part of Friday afternoon hauling furniture around and assembling my drawing table, and figured that was a decent workout. On Tuesday, I did another of those pyramid-workouts: started my first set with the dumbbells 5 lbs. heavier than usual, did slightly fewer reps, then dropped 2.5 lbs. for each of the next 4 sets, adding reps w/each cycle. Felt pretty swole after and sweated a ton, so that’s good. I also joined one of The Guys and a new pal of his for the first 2 miles of their run on Monday morning. I want to ease back into running, and decided that while I could have gone farther, I’d have wound up pretty sore for the next few days. Hence bailing at 2 miles. I might try a few miles locally today or tomorrow, to start building a rhythm. I was glad to discover that my pal’s new running pal is a paramedic, in case my cardio was in worse shape than I thought.
Here’s the drawing table
Until Next Week
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back next week, maybe with a new podcast (July 4th holiday so I might skip it), definitely some great links, maybe some art, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.
Wake up stop dreaming,
—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
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