Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead; a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

Blaise Cendrars (Swiss/French)

For several months of the year, Phoenix resembles the origins of its name.  Days burst into flames, only to leave people panting in a heap of their ashes by nightfall.  I’m mostly a puddle, rather than dry ashes.  By the end of October, the desert comes to its senses and rises to present its inhabitants with temperatures more realistic and less flammable.

If you’re wondering, this mention of the Phoenix desert has absolutely nothing to do with the quote at the top, except that the cool air of a mine would be welcome relief today.  Yesterday, we topped out at 115F and maintained triple digits until late into the night.  We didn’t need lamps on our foreheads; we merely glowed with heat, the skin of our fingers were seared when we touched the handles of our cars.  The brightness was neither dubious nor false in its illumination.  Even sunglasses and wide-brimmed hats didn’t turn down the light.

Still, in the middle of the hottest day yet this summer — a record setting day — people were out on bicycles or hiking the many desert mountain trails near my house.  They were JOGGING!  Crazy people, no doubt.  People who’ve had one too many knocks on the head, I imagine.  People who haven’t the good sense God gave a duck.

Me?  I exercised in my house.  In the center of our downstairs area is a staircase walled on three sides.  It makes a perfect square to walk around.  And around.  And around.  The dogs stand off to the side and watch their mistress “walk the square” as I call it.  Around and around.  They look at me as if I’m crazy.

In fact, I mutter to myself while I walk the square — only for the sake of the dogs, of course, who consider craziness just another form of fun.  My muttering, circling, forays around the square only serve to complete the picture of a woman, dazed by the Arizona heat in July, who just wants to move a bit without having to drive to the mall.  The mall isn’t really that great for walking unless you get there before all the texting teenagers who don’t look where they’re going.  Still, other than the square in my house, it’s the only cool place in all of Phoenix.

Except maybe the movie theater, which if you close your eyes and plug your ears, for just a moment it might resemble the cool, dark depths of a mine.

So here’s how it went:  I told on my husband.  I gave away his nighttime secret — to the doctor, no less.  There we were, two happy little people sitting in the doctor’s office, following up on some teensy-weensy little medicine change, when I blurted out a statement that shall forever change the way Dan and I conduct our nighttime business.

“I think Dan has apnea,” I said, my throat filling with the pleasure of a do-gooding wife who reads way too information on the internet.  But there I was telling on my husband … asking about sleep apnea and if it really can cause sudden death.  We don’t do sudden death in our house.  It’s not allowed, like drinking from the toilet bowl or licking clean the bottoms of our shoes would be frowned-upon behavior.  The thought of tragic rainclouds smudging our still-vibrant loveliness is unthinkable and forbidden.  The horror of even a moment’s notion of my beloved’s sudden death is simply not acceptable.

So, I told on him.

I blathered on about his snoring … and how in the midst of the cacophony that sings from his nightly throat, he often becomes quiet and still — and eerily silent — before loudly gasping in a sonorous boom that causes the dogs to shift position and hold their paws over their ears.  I told how it happens over and over all night long.  And how his sudden, loud, nearly violent, inhalations wake me.  How I curve myself to match the shape of his sleeping body, listening to the ebb and flow of his breath.  How I wonder how long I should listen to those moments of growing silence before I should drag him feet first off the bed to breathe life back into his suddenly quiet mouth.  How I’ve memorized the cadence of CPR counting, should it be needed.   Poor Dan.  What could he say?

“Nuh huh.  No way.”

“Yuh huh.  Way.”

So, my desperately shy guy spent last night in a sleep study facility, in his jammies, hooked to wires and probes — without his evening glass of wine, without the familiarity of his home, or the comfort of his own bed, or his habit of falling asleep in the middle of a David Letterman punchline.  Nevertheless, he bravely endured “The Study.”  This morning he came home with a diagnosis of Obstructive Sleep Apnea and an order for a full CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine that he will need to wear over his mouth and nose every night.  Poor Dan.

But me?  I’m crowing!

I told on my husband.  Yes, our nighttime is soon to be punctuated with the hiss of an air machine.  Yes, Dan will forever need to be strapped to a machine whenever he sleeps.  Yes, our bedroom will be newly-decorated with the likes of medical equipment, complete with its hoses and buttons and what-nots.  Yes, he is mortified.  Yes, yes, yes and yes.

Still, I’m contenting myself this morning with the thought that some information gathered from that series of tubes known as The Internets and The Google may have — SAVED.  HIS.  LIFE.

So, I’ll continue to tell on him like a kid telling on a naughty friend — again and again and again — until we are so old we’ve lost all good sense and the notion of slipping off into the night only wake up dead doesn’t sound like such a bad idea after all.

In the meantime, take a breath, dear.

My parents claimed often and vociferously that I was born with my grandfather’s white-hot Irish temper.  They swore there wasn’t a diaper change, a feeding, a bath … a moment …  that wasn’t accompanied by needle sharp shrieks that melted every microscopic cochlear hair deep inside the whorls of their ears.  They claimed that the sounds from my tiny body could peel wallpaper and liquefy the floor.

At two, my mother kept a leash around my waist because I followed strangers.  Down the street.  Out of sight.  Not even a glance back.  Buh bye, gone.  I vividly recall as a four-year old, kicking a hole in my bedroom door because I didn’t want to change out of my princess dress and into play clothes suitable for digging in the sandbox.  In the end, I changed clothes … but a child’s size 4 shoe hole seemed evidence enough to me that I had won that battle.

I was also that charming child who could wheedle and whine her way to candy before dinner and a third popsicle right before bed.  If something made me cry, I threw my whole body into it — holding my breath until I turned blue and fainted.  Literally.  I held my breath until I fainted.

Thank goodness I grew out of those shrieking, kicking, tantrum-giving, fainting episodes.  My days as a wild Irish heathen (as my mother referred to me), ended at around six.  From that time on, I was, ah-hem, a model child.  I was perfect.  The Irish family curse was broken.

Now it’s back.

Well, not the screaming tantrum part, but rather the other family curse part.  It seems I’ve got the bad … I mean really, really bad … cholesterol level that has bedeviled (and killed) many of my family members.  Yes, I have the oh-my-god, I could have a heart attack or stroke any second now because of these cholesterol numbers thing.  Apparently, the arteries of this sweet-natured, formerly-bad-Irish-girl-gone-good have quietly been clogging up.

This just makes me want to hold my breath until I turn blue.

Instead, I’ll take my medicine and hope to goodness that the sludge that’s been silently building will have the good sense to reverse course.

Not a lick of gravy is henceforth allowed to touch these lips.  I’m off the double cheeseburger wagon for good, and you know those french fries? gone like a two-year-old without her leash.  I’m off the sauce and … gulp! … on the treadmill.  Yeah, baby … it’s the old diet and exercise routine for me.

Either that or I hold my breath permanently … and I’m just too cursed with that family streak of stubborn Irish to let that happen yet.  So if you need me, I’ll be the squatty gym babe on the StairMaster, third from the end.  You know, the limping woman with the chronic sinus condition.  Yeah, that one — the one trying to keep her really bad Senator Levin comb over in place while sweating out all those bad cholesterolies — all the while fondly daydreaming of sweet by-gone days of steak and mashed potatoes drowning in butter.

Wish me luck.

This past week has been something, hasn’t it?  First we heard of Ed McMahon’s passing and all I could think of was how he was the greatest second banana — ever.  He was eighty-something.  Then, Farah Fawcett died.  There wasn’t a teenage boy who didn’t have that red swimsuit poster of her above his bed.  She embraced her sex-symbolness unabashedly and then went on to surprise everyone with some powerful acting chops (The Burning Bed, for one) and finally her grace and courage as she documented her own brave fight with cancer.

Next it was Michael Jackson — talented, tortured, gifted and genius all in one very odd little package.  No one can deny his music, though.  It occurred to me that kids could always listen to the lyrics of every one of his songs without having parental controls enforced over the content.

Last night we heard that the ultimate TV pitch man, Billy Mays, died a couple of days after hitting his head in a rough airplane landing.  I guess the Sham Wow guy will have to step up now to continue the legacy.

Two not-so unexpected deaths and two bolts out of the blue.  I mention this only because I woke up last night with a clattering thought about mortality and fragility and … oh my god, is this a heart attack or the last spaghetti noodle finally sliding its way into my stomach after eating a late dinner?  I’m still here so it must have been dinner.  Nevertheless, it could as easily have been a misplaced heartbeat.  Or an aneurysm.  Or a sudden knot in my bloodstream.  Or not.

Several days ago, a tiny snippet of a mystery piece I wrote received first prize from a very prestigious website contest.  I wrote a short, short mystery I titled, Death by Dust Bunny, about a cleaning lady, or as she would call herself, a Home Management Professional, who watches an unfortunate dust bunny flutter in the breeze of her final breath.  I threw it together in just a couple of hours and entered at the last second, knowing the piece was filled with writing boo-boos and structural skinned knees. It was perhaps a writerly thing that needed to be killed, but instead lived long enough to win first prize.

Now we have real life mysteries to solve.  Did Michael Jackson take one too many dance steps with prescription drugs?  Was Billy Mays killed by his airplane seat?  Will I stay away from those late night spaghetti plates?

While I’m waiting for the answers to these very compelling questions, I think I’ll pull out my police procedures and forensic science books.  Others will solve the Jackson and Mays mysteries.  Me?  I’m going to polish up that short little first prize piece because now I’m really curious why someone would kill a nice little cleaning lady (er, Home Management Professional).

Oops, excuse me … I think I hear my next book calling my name — and this time it’s a MYSTERY!!!

Like many, I have a busy mind.  A very, VERY busy mind.  Unfortunately, while this lovely mind of mine is zipping around telling me this grand thought and speaking of that profound notion … all I hear is the adult voice that also plagued Charlie Brown — Whaa whaa, Whaa whaa, Whaa whaaah.

I don’t hear, sit up straight, eat your vegetables, hey, let’s go walk that thirty minutes on the treadmill.  I only hear, Whaa whaa, Whaa whaa, Whaa whaaah.

I don’t hear, write, write write.  I only hear, Whaa whaa, Whaa whaa, Whaa whaaa.

But I have a number of good reasons for being deaf to my better angels.  Truly.  Thousands of good reasons.  Here are only a few of my myriad excuses:

1. It’s summer in Phoenix.  No one is expected to actually DO anything in Phoenix during the summer.
2. It’s winter in Phoenix.  No one is expected to actually WORK when the weather is so beautiful.
3. I clearly announced that my diet starts tomorrow.
4. My feet hurt.
5. My hair is too tight for my head.
6. What?
7. But I LOVE [fill in the blank].
8. Are you gonna eat that?
9. But my fingers are too puffy to type.
10. I was just gonna get to that … honest … really.

Feel free to borrow any reason you’d like … or add your own to the list.  Anything to quiet that noisy, insistent, rambling, incessant, really-it’s-good-for-you …

… Whaa whaa, Whaa whaa, Whaa whaaah.

I was asked the other day just how I decide a blog topic for any given post.  “How do you know what to write about?” was the question.  I had to think about that.  Really.  I usually just let fly before thinking where I’m going.  Outline?  Not me.  Beginning, middle, end?  Hardly.  Write first in draft so I can carefully edit?  Never.

I often spend considerable time writing something and posting it, only to dismantle it minutes later, hoping I got to it before anyone happens upon what is certainly a poor and paltry effort.  Or something inappropriate.  Or banal.  Delete, Delete, Delete is more commonly my battle cry than I care to admit.  When one’s wings are made of spoons, the ability to propel oneself into a literary sky is often diminished.  Unfortunately, fighting rigid wings is my usual state of being.

Darn those hard, inflexible, tarnished spoon-wings.

To make matters worse, the metallic taste in my dear little beak only points out the rigidity of the rest of my bolted-together mind.

Why so hard on myself?  Maybe because I know the process of writing anything — a blog post, a page of prose, some dialogue, a journalistic effort, a small poem — comes with the obvious responsibility to actually say something.

Let’s take this morning as an example.  After peering into the mirror for the millionth time this week, hoping against hope that I’ll find just one small and brave fledgling hair on the top of my head, I honestly don’t know what to say. There is no volunteer hair — only the sight of a growing land-mass of scalp surrounded by a receding tide of hair.  I want to say something about that.  I want to write about the beauty of bald women everywhere.  If not that, then I want to enunciate the tragic disappointment of going bald in a hair-filled world.  I’d like to wildly sing about Popeye the Sailor Man who “likes to go swimmin’ with bald-headed women.”  I want to find not only the eloquence, but also the elegance of yet one more human condition to conquer, if not at least to understand.

But my wings are made of spoons.  Rigid, hard, unyielding spoons that simply cannot fly in the face of this particular misfortune.

Bald after brain surgery or chemotherapy when one knows that shaved or chemically altered hair will slowly grow back is so completely different from bald forever for no good reason.  Me, whine?  Yes.  Vociferiously, ad nauseum, standing-in-front-of-the-mirror crying huge crocodile tears, day after day whining.

“It’s part of the grieving process,” my husband points out.  “Process, Schmocess,” I retort.  “You try going bald and see how it feels,” I cry.  “Um, I am bald,” he offers, pointing to a circle of scalp on the back of his head.  “Yeah, well … well … you have a boy hair.  It’s supposed to fall out!” I say before resuming my tearful search for that one little hair that I know is not going to show up for active duty.

So there you have it.  That’s the best I can muster this morning.  It’s one day’s worth of not-so grand Eloquence.  Less-than perfect Elegance.  Hardly soaring Dialogue.  Yet, these are the words of a small bird momentarily overwhelmed by the incomprehensible in the world of all things female.  Maybe it’s simply one more blog post that will go up for one nanosecond before my better angels swoop in to press Delete, Delete, Delete.

But then again, maybe there’s another spoon-winged bird out there who might be struggling with his or her own image in the mirror.  Maybe we’ll find a way to even slightly bend the rigidity of profound disappointment for yet another part of life — the forever de-hairing of our heads.  Maybe we’ll stop obsessing over our falling hair and instead sing the Popeye song — loudly, with our chins held high and our chests bursting with joy.

I like to go swimmin’ with bald-headed women.  I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.  Boop Boop.

Maybe tomorrow.

I love noise.  Life is noisy.  It bangs and clanks and booms and clicks.  It’s cloudy.   It’s sticky.  Life makes sound and I love every thunderous moment.  I like it when doors and cupboards are opened and closed with a grand Taa Daa! rather than with a shrug and a quiet apology.  I love when the skies open with boisterous bangs and watery splashes, only to be soaked up by our thirsty Arizona desert and my equally-hungry ears.

Life SHOULD be noisy.  And relished.  And listened to.  And heard.  A while ago, we had these kicking speakers installed in the ceiling of our family room so we’d have surround sound of the highest order.  Now we can pop in a DVD and crank the sound until the cells of our bodies liquify.  It’s glorious!

I love my noisy life because I know it’s the silent moments that have always ruined me.

I’m destroyed by days when Dan and I don’t speak, but rather move about the house like very quiet, unseen ghosts.  We’re aware of the presence of each other, yet we’re silent.  We don’t speak.  We don’t acknowledge as we pass in the hallway or sit side-by-side on the couch.  I know it’s really the comforting quietude of a married couple in deep companionship, but nevertheless, I don’t trust those moments.

I have a reason for disliking silent times that otherwise would signal a welcome respite from the constant cacophony of daily life.  I’ve found that the most terrible things seem always to be unannounced by noise or words or warnings.  Things that go bump in the night are not nearly as terrifying as the instant just before one’s foot steps on a life-turning dime.  There is a dizzying silence even in that thousandth of a second between the crashing together of cars and the Pop! sound of the deployment of a life-saving airbag.

It was within the silence of a growing brain tumor that everything I knew of security and safety was forever changed.  Even now, just one quietly falling hair, circling down the shower drain can serve to bedevil me.  Then there’s that tiny, fragile moment of unspoken concern for my still-frightened legs at the top of every flight of stairs.  There’s also that now and again grabbing and holding and listening for something — anything — that might give an answer for that cloud passing through my brain.

It’s also that short, or long, apex between an argument and the I’m sorry that follows.  It’s that nanosecond between television programming and the louder decibels that signal the abrupt insertion of commercial material.  It’s the pause of my fingers over the computer keyboard that means I can’t think what next to type.

Yes.  It’s still the silence I hate.

Today, it’s the stoic silence on the face of Scarlett, our Golden Retriever.  Her left hip screams a winding course through her body, but all we hear is the silence of a foot that no longer touches the floor.  Today, the proper firing sequence of doggie toenails clicking across the floor is missing one crucial cylinder.  Today, one leg is held away from the ground so it touches nothing.  It makes no noise.  This now-quiet left leg has abandoned its running, fetching, toe-clicking joy.  Without the ability to form words, Scarlett quietly, silently, gently beseeches me for help.  I give her pills from the vet.  I wait as medicine moves and melts, without a sound, through her stomach and into her blood stream.  But not even powerful pain pills seem to help this hip thing — this miserable, arthritic, elder dog, hip dysplasistic, quietly ruinous thing.

God, I hate this kind of silence.