Jeremy -- A Smart(er) Cancer Survivor

A dear friend of mine, Jeremy Geelan, a colleague from my working days, the son of another colleague, Peter, who sold our books in Europe, celebrated a significant milestone this month, the three year anniversary of his radical surgery to deal with pancreatic cancer.  From all signs it was a complete success and Jeremy is now in full bloom as Chief Marketing Officer & Conference Chair at KAAZING Corporation.  He morphed into all things Internet from his humble beginnings as an analog publisher, but true to his nature even then he was looking to the future being founder and publisher of the "21st Century Studies" series (back in the good ole' 20th century) and some of those I co-published in US (Jeremy at the time was in the UK).

He confronted the lethal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer head on and entrusted his Doctors in Denmark to perform Whipple surgery, not an option for all forms of pancreatic cancer but, in his case (and probably Steve Jobs had he not pursued naturopathic options), a hopeful means of addressing this dreaded disease.  My father died of pancreatic cancer and I can attest, it is among the most terrible ways to pass into nothingness. 

This radical surgery is a nightmare and it is hard to imagine what Jeremy had to endure, during, after (I recall he was on his back for a very long period of time, trying to type in compromised positions to get on with his work) and then the dreaded follow-up chemotherapy.  As he describes the surgery: "The Whipple procedure cost me the lion's share of my pancreas, all of my gall bladder, a goodly portion of my stomach, and a portion too of my duodenum (small intestine)."  Yes, it is that radical, but Jeremy has his life back.

Soon after his Dad died -- of cancer as well (he was a mentor to me as I would like to think I've been to Jeremy), Jeremy presented me with a bound edition of the 1979 edition of Logophile, The Cambridge University Journal of Words and Language of which (naturally) Jeremy was the editor.  It is inscribed "To Bob from Jeremy 18 iii 1993.  Like books "words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking" (John Maynard Keynes).  This day in loving memory of Dad, I'd like to present you with a volume of wildness.  It's where it all (for me) began -- in a garret undergraduate room at Cambridge belonging to an Open Exhibitioner in English called Jeremy Geelan."

From there Jeremy threw the gauntlet down and never looked back -- in spite of such health adversity.

I commend any reader to visit Jeremy's blog.  He doesn't post there very often, although he Twitters regularly.  But in response to his latest post, I responded,

Dear Jeremy,

I don't know what led me to your blog today. Call it an instinct. You don't post here very often, but I felt I ought to visit, and there it was, your fairly recent post. Brilliant. True. Very Jeremy. But ever since I've known you -- how many years, at least thirty? -- you've always been "smart." But you were "bucking bronco smart" -- undisciplined, your mind wondering everywhere. I would say your terrible, but successful bout with pancreatic cancer has made you more focused. You are now more smart in a focused way, about your career, and about the things that matter in life. I feel privileged to have known you so long, and to say congratulations on passing the third year landmark of your successful surgery. You did it bravely, trusting your doctors, and embracing your loved ones and your friends and colleagues. On to the future! Yours, Bob

I am copying his complete post below:

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Smarter

In ten days' time it will be three years to the day since I was successfully operated on for pancreatic cancer.  Some of you reading this may be unaware of the prior story; worry not, this is not a post about cancer. It is, though, a post about survival.

There's a saying about how 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' that many undergoing chemo- and/or radiation therapy often hear, or even use themselves, to make light of the unpleasantness of the process and to remind themselves that there is a flip side to the nastiness of the "planned poisoning" that they are enduring: it may extend their lives and is therefore “better than the alternative” (as in, death).

My purpled Twitter avatar, to mark World Cancer Day last month (Feb 4)

But recently a colleague of mine in the world of the Internet, Guy Kawasaki, hit upon a headline - I have yet to check whether it was Guy's own or whether he was passing on something from elsewhere - that, for me, is much more pregnant with meaning and possibility, in terms of viewing cancer in the first place, and chemotherapy/radiation treatment in the second, as a potential inflexion point for anyone who survives one or both:

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Smarter

This, for me, is the much more honest and uplifting statement. Do I feel stronger, having dodged the bullet - thanks to radical Whipple surgery - of the deadliest of all the cancers? Not really. If I could restore my strength to pre-diagnosis levels or above I'd be happy as a clam; realistically speaking, it is not especially likely, as there remain one or two challenges associated with Whipple surgery which tend to linger no matter how hard one tries - a surgically rearranged digestive system is plain not as effective as one that's been left intact.

On the other hand, do I feel smarter? Most emphatically, yes. The things that addressing and overcoming adversity teaches you - about yourself, about those who love you and are loved by you, about your professional colleagues both direct and indirect, about total strangers and/or long-lost friends; about nutrition, about the Internet, about the healing power of music and above all of love, about cognitive mysteries such as "chemo brain" and the reassurances increasingly offered by brain science; about physical capacity, about mental agility, about emotion, about faith…

In truth there isn't a single aspect of the human condition about which you do not, on being confronted with an early departure from the game of life, end up a tad smarter if on the contrary you have the good fortune to survive.

"Survival" and "survivor" remain the metaphors of choice when dealing with people like me but, speaking here only for myself, I am not sure how useful those words are. We are *all* survivors, after all; we all survive, daily, onslaughts of inconsiderateness or even plain cruelty, of injustice either direct or indirect, of disappointment and/or even despair. We all survive week in, week out the challenges of work and play, of life and love, of learning and of teaching, and of the eternal search for meaning in which we are all, to greater or lesser extents of awareness, engaged.

So the human being who "survives" cancer, of whatever variety, is no different from one who survives any other of life's curve-balls: bereavement, for example, or financial ruin. There is a commonality, and it is that of the bounceback or comeback. We humans are resilient. We have mastered endurance. We are *all* survivors. Of something. Of life itself, perhaps.

But the Kawasaki headline offers a more nuanced perspective.

Just as travel broadens the mind, or university, so pancreatic cancer it turns out is a hugely enriching life-phase that does, no doubt about it, leave you smarter. That it might just as easily have left you dead is not I think the point; many things kill us, from traffic accidents to natural disasters. But how many things actually make us smarter? We learn about humility - that is a given when quite literally your life (in the form of your innards) is for multiple hours in the hands of a surgeon. We learn about the irrefutable power of positivity. We learn about the boundaries of medicine and the central role of self-healing. We learn about the perils of certainty, and the corresponding importance of flexibility and agile modification of behavior and/or treatment. We learn about the often neglected importance of hydration. We learn about what truly makes us, and those around us, tick.

Now don't get me wrong. There are other ways to become wiser in this world, all of them less painful, less intrusive, and less detrimental and disruptive to the routine of yourself and your family. But that does not detract from this one, enduring truth, and I can vouch for it first-hand: What Doesn't Kill You - really, truly madly, deeply...take it from me - Leaves You Smarter.

Indeed, very Jeremy.

Winter "Down Here"

While the winter has worn on and on "up there" (where we used to live), it is no wonder the visitors and the traffic in Palm Beach County has grown this year.  I still miss aspects of our former Connecticut winters.  Being younger helped and I found much of it to be a pleasant challenge, splitting wood for our wood burning stove, even shoveling the snow, and getting to work on the ice-slicked roads.  The one thing I do not miss is getting up on a ladder to pour boiling water into our gutters and downspouts to keep them clear of ice as snow was melting on the roof during the day and refreezing at night. I remember one very bad winter storm in the 1970's when Connecticut closed all roads and threatened to arrest any driver other than essential health and official personnel.  The only problem is I heard the announcement while I was sitting at my desk listening to a portable radio; I had already decided to close the office but I had to find my way home without getting arrested!  (I wasn't.)

But that seems like another lifetime ago.  Now, instead, friends and family come here to visit.  No wonder.  And when they do, our boat and the waters of Lake Worth and Peanut Island at the Palm Beach inlet are inviting.  A couple of days ago Jon and Anna were visiting.  Here's a photo of Ann (wearing my cowboy hat) and Anna as we departed for the Tiki Waterfront Sea Grille at The Riviera Beach Marina. While we having lunch there, a fishing boat was tossing unused chum into the water attracting some powerful, predatory fish known as "jacks" and pelicans as well.  I thought this very brief video of a pelican balancing itself on the power cord of the fishing boat, the jacks menacingly swimming beneath, to be worthy of a YouTube posting.  Pelicans are among my favorite birds, funny to look at, but graceful when they glide only inches above the water.  They don't have an easy time coexisting with commercial fisherman (competition) or with recreational fisherman as pelicans sometimes get snagged by their hooks.  But this pelican doesn't look like it has a care in the world.

It was nice to have Jon run the boat as it freed me to film a little of the trip home, running north in the ICW part of Lake Worth with Singer Island and some of Munyon Island on our starboard side.  Having spent most of my life in the northeast gives me a special appreciation of these moments. Here's hoping for some warmer weather for our friends and family back where we used to call home!

Play Ball, Again

To be an American and unable to play baseball is comparable to being a Polynesian and unable to swim.  It's an impossible situation."  So begins John Cheever's short story, The National Pastime.

Fortunately for me, baseball is part of who I am.  Like multitudes before me, I played the game as a kid.  I am an American.

More than any other sport, to know baseball is to "know the heart and mind of America," as Jacques Barzun commented.  It changes with the times, but fundamentally stays the same.  Professional baseball was an all "white boys" game but once the color barrier was crossed it morphed into a multicultural field of boys from Cuba, South and Central America, Japan. Taiwan, not to mention all races from every state in the nation.  It has been tarnished by steroid use and by the all mighty dollar, making it big business, even a show business.  In effect, it reflects our society and the values of our culture. Yet, it not only survives, as does our nation, it thrives.

Baseball is more than a sport. It is a ritual, like a religion, binding all those who walk through the tunnels on their way to their seats, emerging to view the majesty of the field itself.  It is the altar where the unique ancestral rituals of the game are played out.  There is a symbolism in the game's subtle moments that connect us with a sense of mysticism.  It remains special, sacred and spiritual.

How fitting that the season begins in the spring, a rebirth of sorts, and ends in the fall, going into hibernation until the next spring.  And so, we begin the cycle again, and again, from one generation to the next.  Let the games begin!

Reflection

A very poignant piece and lovely poem / lyrics by the late John Denver.  I know exactly what Josh Brown and Denver mean.  Ah, the stories to be told, but now, they've been mostly told to me as I could practically reverse the digits of Brown's age in stating mine.  But 37 is a great age, a time to feel fabulously alive; then I was running a publishing company, feeling pretty much like Josh, waking up excited by the forthcoming day, and the week if it was my favorite day, Monday.  But just wait, Josh, if you think time is accelerating at 37, well, you know what I'm about to say, so, instead here's some advice from a septuagenarian: enjoy every day -- you'll never get one of them back!  Finally, although someone else might be looking back at me in the mirror, my mind says he's a stranger; I'm still eagerly looking forward to the coming day.

Other Desert Cities, A Classic American Drama at the Maltz

As we drove up to the Maltz Jupiter Theatre Friday night there was a storm north, probably over Jensen Beach, and the night sky was crackling with constant cloud to cloud lightning in the distance.  We seemed to be headed into its vortex which, in a way, I would describe the essence of Jon Robin Baitz' play, Other Desert Cities.

It was a pleasant surprise to see such a stimulating play at the Maltz Theatre, not that they haven't had such plays in the past, but we wish they would do more, this one in particular having the "look and feel" of the serious Palm Beach Dramaworks productions, including two actors who frequent the latter stage, the always dependable Cliff Burgess and the fabulous Angie Radosh.  Add the other very competent actors, the set and staging, and the result is an evening of fine theatre 

I'd almost call the play "Arthur Miller Lite" as it has many of the tragic elements of some of his plays -- families in weighty conflict -- but with comic elements as well, a tragicomedy of sorts.  It is a Christmas get-together, which is supposed to be a wonderful time of the year, right?  Yeah, "right" -- a perfect time for discord, especially when you put a dysfunctional family under the microscope.

Here we watch the Wyeth family in their home in the desert city of Palm Springs "welcoming" back one of their own who has strayed from the flock, Brooke, the daughter of  Lyman Wyeth and his wife Polly.  She has been away for six years. During that time she wrote and published a novel, but then was in and out of mental hospitals. Since her "recovery" and in the aftermath of a dissolving marriage, she has written a memoir that is about to be published, one that paints her parents in a very unforgivable and unfavorable light. They who live in a power-broker world, a well connected family, former friends of Nancy and Ronald Reagan, extremely wealthy and very conservative, set in their ways, and never expecting their only daughter to publicly expose family wounds.   

Brooke's arrival and her project are the catalysts to begin the pot stirring on stage, and joining her parents (who were involved in television, she as a writer and he as an actor) are her brother Trip who produces reality television shows and Brooke's Aunt Silda, Polly's alcoholic sister, who is staying with the Wyeths now that she is out of rehab. Silda used to collaborate with Polly writing for TV as well.

So we have a bunch of writers getting together.  What could be more fun with the potential for sharp, cutting dialogue than that? And in spite of Brooke's hope that the family will approve of her memoir -- her real purpose for visiting -- what hope is there for that as she blames them for one of the family secrets, her brother Henry's suicide?  Henry had spent his teenage years rebelling against the family values, joining an anti-Vietnam war underground movement which culminated in the bombing (and a death) at an army recruiting center. Presumably, he jumped off a Seattle ferry, leaving suicide notes and for that Brooke intensely blames her parents. But there is much that Brooke does not know. This family, in fact, is shrouded in secrets.

As the play wears on, these other secrets are peeled away leaving the exposed, corrupted core of the family.  Add to that the divergent political views, opposite polarities of the daughter and mother, and the action taking place during the time of the Iraq War -- the microcosm of the family war in "one desert city" against the macrocosm of carnage in "another desert city" -- and you have a play with lots of moving parts and things to think about.

It's also a play about writing. How much can a writer can step over the line of fiction into non-fiction, writing about characters who are close family? It reminds me a little of when Thomas Wolfe published Look Homeward Angel, a thinly disguisednovel of his family and town folk in Asheville, NC, which enraged the town folk and left him an outsider.  It is one of my own constraints when writing, especially when I attempt any fiction as I always seem to circle back to childhood memories that are not too dissimilar from those Jon Robin Baitz writes about.  At a certain point should I abandon self-censorship?  Believe me, these were thoughts that went through my mind watching this play.  And I think Baitz is as concerned about the issue of writing truths from one's experience fully conscious of the pain that might elicit.

So I take this play very personally and therefore why shouldn't I think it exceptional, especially as you often hear the question: where are the great new playwrights?  My one regret is not having read this play first, as I think it is one of those plays which may be as good (or better?) in the reading. Ann (my wife) on the other hand, was not as impressed, especially after the first act with which she had difficulty connecting emotionally, and Ann has a very accurate emotional barometer.  I sort of felt the same way at intermission, although on an intellectual level I profoundly connected -- so many elements of my childhood were stirred up.  I'm not sure this disconnected emotional feel was the play itself, the acting, or the direction.

But before making some comments on those elements, I must say a few words about the set, the first one designed at the Maltz by Anne Mundell, a highly accomplished set designer and teacher of Scenic Design at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama.  If verisimilitude is the objective of a set, this one is over the top.  It IS a desert home and one feels as if real people live there.  It is also somewhat monochromatic, like the desert, with people living out their secrets there. Outstanding. And Cory Pattak took full advantage of lighting the extraordinary stage and capturing changing emotional moments.

The mother (Polly played by Susan Cella) and her daughter (Brooke played by Andrea Conte) perhaps have the most difficult roles in the play.  Polly comes from Jewish roots, now transformed into a waspy, right wing wife of a former Ambassador, after a stint in Hollywood, a woman who now revels in her wealth and connections.  Painfully she is also now saddled by an emotionally distraught daughter with whom she is so congenitally at odds. She has to deliver some of the more caustic lines in the play such as:  "You can die from too much sensitivity.  So much pressure to be fair.  I hate being fair."  Or when asked whether she is acting or not she replies "Acting is real -- the two are hardly mutually exclusive in this family." She plays Polly professionally but uninspiredly.  Perhaps it is the role itself, a complex one of the controlling mother when juxtaposed to the other complicated roles on stage.

Andrea Conte's Brooke begins her role as an anxious, depressed,  physically agitated young woman and then elevates it to an angry depressed person, with a certain shrillness about her portrait that was at times jarring, frightening.  I don't know how she could have played the role any differently -- it was her yoke as written by Baitz  -- and she was certainly credible, transforming herself into a "different Brooke" in the play's coda, an act of resignation and acceptance.

Angie Radosh who plays Polly's sister, Silda, inhabited a similar role as Claire in Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance. (In fact, I would be remiss in not noting the subtle tip of the hat by the playwright to Albee's play. When the father wants to send Brooke a check, support her in some way, Brooke protests having seen friends ruined by monetary interference from parents saying, "The balance is so delicate."). The two plays are eerily similar as are Radosh's role in each (although in Albee's play she is a drunk and here she is a rehabilitated drunk) but she is a consummate pro, having antipathy for Polly's values, leading her to prod her niece to take on the family in her memoir (secretly providing information for her).  Silda, though, has a part in the family secrets as well, and when it is revealed, the look on Radosh's face is one of horror. Another outstanding performance by Angie Radosh.

Cliff Burgess is really coming into his own as one of the more versatile actors in South Florida. We've seen him play many roles, with his portrayal of Brooke's brother, Trip, and his unique relationship in the family dynamics (he was only five when his brother's suicide occurred, so of all the characters in the play he is the most "blameless") he comes across as the voice of reason in the play, a truth speaker, to his parents and to his sister.  Not surprisingly, as he was a "privileged kid" his interests seem superficial, producing a TV show where real life people are "put on trial" and the jurors are celebrities.  The perfect cynicism, carried off by Burgess depicting the way we live today along with his constant texting, even while speaking -- the modern day multitasker.  But he's had his own secrets as well, revealed later in the play to his sister.  A bravura performance by Burgess.

Richard Kline's performance as the patriarch of the family, Lyman, is spot on.  He is a man of financial substance and conservative social connections, but truly supportive of his children (in surprising ways as well but no spoilers here), who bears the burden of the multiple layers of secrets, with a pleasantry in sync with his former profession of actor.  He is the peacemaker in the family (as was my own father), always trying to use his skills as a former Ambassador (having been appointed to the position by his old buddy, Ronald Reagan), to reconcile differences between his daughter and his wife, and to get his daughter to accept the ways of the privileged, even offering to buy the home next door so she can leave Long Island for Palm Springs (failing to see the depth of Brooke's rebellion).  Kline, who once had a regular role in the sitcom Three's Company, rises to the occasion in this serious drama.

I think this play is a director's nightmare.  The play is long -- 2 hours plus an intermission -- and there is a lot of dialogue and raw emotion, and although only five characters, it is a crowded stage, so, unavoidably, there are times when actor's backs are to some part of the audience (especially ours as we were seated far stage left).  The first act all seems to be about establishing the characters, not the explosive emotion of the second act, a fault of the play or the director?  It's hard to tell. Still, Peter Flynn, who directed the Maltz's award-winning Man of La Mancha, keeps focused on the playwright's intention, so accurately summed up by a line from the play that Flynn quotes in his playbill commentary: Everything in life is about being seen, or not seen, and eventually, everything IS seen.

Indeed, the Maltz has done a very credible job with a very good play.  Although upon exiting I heard someone say, "I wish they just did all musicals," for me, keep a fine play or two in the mix each season!