There is no clever picture to announce this post.  Plainly said, more people than ever are showing up with Alzheimer’s or some sort of related dementia.  One in two over eighty and many as young as 45 or 50 are diagnosed every day with this tragic disease.  This isn’t really good news for Boomers or their children.

Alzheimer’s is a trickster.  A very mean and wily trickster.  The word, dementia, is from the Latin de–“apart, away” + mens “mind.”  I watched Dan’s parents struggle, hide, ignore, accept and then disavow their own dementia.  Clearly, they fit the definition of the word.  They were “away” from their “minds.”  Eventually, they knew only endless days filled with nothing past, nothing future, only the everness of right now.

I watched also my young neighbor in his early fifties who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s.  He and his wife were valiant against their thief in the night.  But in the end, that thief (aka, Alzheimer’s), stole his thoughts, his dignity and finally, his life.

To honor their struggles … to allow a glimpse into their inner workings, I wrote a story entitled, All the Dancing Birds.  The unpublished manuscript was a Pacific Northwest Writers Association literary finalist and the inspiration for the name of this blog.

One day I hope for this story to find its way to bookstore shelves.  Hopefully before I’m eighty and one way or the other on my own spin of the Alzheimer’s wheel-o-fate.

Alzheimer’s, once a hush-hush topic, is now — at last — being talked about.  On Monday, I’m heading out to buy the most recent guidebook to finding an agent willing to look at my manuscript.  I just need one someone who’s willing to say “yes” to a fictional portrayal of the dark and twisty corridors that wind through a mind in full-throated Alzheimer’s disease.

This Dancing Bird is ready for prime time and just needs one able-bodied person interested in championing one small story.  Until then, I’ll continue to revisit the manuscript until there’s not one errant word contained in its pages.  I’ll continue to revamp its synopsis and accompanying query letter until I’m blue in the face.

If that doesn’t work, I still have the nub of that really nice candle that recently turned my dear friend from a possible breast cancer patient into a smiling I’m-too-sexy-for-my-bra woman.  Hey, maybe it’ll work for a manuscript that desperately needs to see the light of publication.

Here’s where I place a smiley face!  🙂

Now and then I come across an excellent quote.  This one I especially love:

I find myself using the word “bandwidth” now, and feel the mounting urge to say “megabit” and “gigabit” and “terabit” as though these are normal words like “tree” and “rock” and “bunny.” I’ve learned the meaning of the word “photonics,” and now, like many techies, believe the most important fundamental particle in the communications industry of the future will be the photon, not the electron. You know your world has changed, has become more innately technological, when a distinction like that strikes you as interesting.

-Joen Achenbach

A while ago, I became interested in Stephen Hawking-ish astrophysics where they get down and dirty with the teensiest little particle thingys in order to study and catalog their behavior.  No, I don’t read about this stuff because I’m a genius, silly!  Rather, in my teensy little thoughts, I decided that if I read about how those cute little fermions, leptons and bosons behave in their purest essence, I might catch a clue into human behavior.  I could use that information to map out characters.  You know what they say … As the nucleon goes, so goes Aunt Mildred in the third chapter. Or, as in … I submit, Mr. Watson, that it was Ms. Quark, in the solarium with the heliocentric theory.

My premise in wading through words I don’t have a chance of understanding is that — if we’re all made of these little atoms and protons and whatnots — maybe we behave like they do simply because we’re influenced by our merest essences.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  That sounds so geeky.

Let me set you to rest.  I understand nothing of it.  Nothing!  With all my reading about the subject, I still can’t walk past a gluon and say with a straight face, “I know you.  Sure you’re indirectly involved with the binding of protons and neutrons together in atomic nuclei.  But what have you done lately?”

Well, now you know my dirty little secret.  I read about quarks.  It could be worse.  I could understand that stuff and be really insufferable.

Splitting an Order

I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,
maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,
no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky arms steady
by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table
and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,
and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,
observing his progress through glasses that moments before
he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half
onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,
and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
her knife, and her fork in their proper places,
then smooths the starched white napkin over her knees
and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.

-Ted Kooser

I shall split my order with Dan.  We will look up quickly while we pass a dish across the table, then we’ll go back to our tiny, elegant thoughts — thoughts that we’ll mull over while we chew.  If we find our thoughts worthy enough, we might talk and share what we’re thinking.  If not, when lunch is over and the waitress is paid, we’ll walk to the car hand-in-hand … knowing we’ve shared a meal, as well as, our quiet, delicate hearts.  It gets no better than that.

Those of us who work from home in our jammies as tortured writers have, at last, been given the best excuse to stay abed until noon — swine flu.

It’s our duty, as stay-at-home writers to … well, perhaps stay at home and work out those plot kinks that have been bugging us.  Maybe tweak some stilted dialogue in the third act of our latest play.  Perhaps write some dark and twisty poetry.  Or, at the very least, play with a Random Name Generator for some really cool character names.  In fact, playing just now, I found the name, Carmella Crinklaw.  I’m keeping that one for future reference.  Carmella Crinklaw.  Doesn’t that just sound perfect for the nosy neighbor in a mystery story?

This may be the opportune time to be that solitary, angst-ridden writer; lonely in the pursuit of excellence, but happy nevertheless for some meager progress.

At the very least, we can work on a design for those now-fashionable flu masks that even movie stars and fashionistas are sporting.

Happy angsting.