Friday, October 05, 2007
Head Job - plus bluenus bograss!
Sometimes it feels like my head is about to rip itself open with frustration, boredom, irritation, angst. There are too many reasons to become hypersensitive to the delicate integument separating my pristine interiority from the foulness of the greater universe without. But all that is analogy, or idiom, or something like that. I cradle my head in my hands and feel the implosion or the crushing or just imagine that the world is peeling back my skin and leaving me open to all that from which I wish to protect myself. It’s a rather delicate feeling.
However, it’s also true that I am liable occasionally to do myself a bit of actual physical damage. Sometimes the imaginary lacerations inflicted by an uncaring reality are secondary to the real cuts and welts I wreak upon my tender cranium.
Perhaps an example or three would be informative: This week I’ve been sporting evidence of three acts of violence done upon my face and head – one entirely by accident, one by accidental application of intentional forces, and one purely pursuant to a well-considered plan. In one case, I was cleaning up a few stray whiskers above my upper lip where the electric shaver sometimes doesn’t get the whole job done, and I neatly sliced a big gash right under my nose. It’s hard to miss, especially when I ripped it open again in a YMCA yoga class with an inopportune swipe of an unexpectedly rough gym towel. Pure class, dude. Is that snotty blood, or bloody snot? In either case, there was plenty of room around me on the bus.
And also: one bleary morning this week I was rushing around cleaning up after myself, putting away my slippers and yesterday’s clothes and other effluvia left thoughtlessly on the bathroom floor, and when I stood up I discovered a towel rack had suddenly (20 years prior) been affixed to the wall in a region through which my head was rapidly moving. What I’m saying is, I smacked the towel rack with the back of my head, knocking it off the wall and significantly gashing the back of my nicely-shaved scalp. That wound still looks rather gruesome, but at least I can hide it on the bus under a hat, and for some bizarre reason, it never hurt except when I poured alcohol on it. So, that’s good, I guess. Relatively speaking.
But the real winner is the little tiny nick on my forehead, where this past Monday a kindly dermo snipped off a bit of flesh that didn’t seem like it was getting along with the rest of my head. The procedure was relatively painless; the surgical site is healing nicely and the whole area feels a lot better now. But, confirming my suspicions, the biopsy came back today as positive for a small and highly removable spot of squamous cell cancer. I’ll go back in another week or so for a more substantial procedure, which will leave me with stitches for a fortnight and a scar pretty much permanently thereafter.
I’m not concerned about the cancer – it was caught early, it’s got clean margins, and it’s good that my vigilance has been worthwhile and well-focused. However, I can’t say I’m exactly happy about being diagnosed with a malignant condition. Maybe it will help me take better care of myself in the long run – fewer self-inflicted head wounds and such. I’d like to think I’d come up with that idea all on my own, but if that’s what I get out of cancer, maybe I can chalk it up to silver linings.
Further to the plus side, this weekend is Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a world-class concert festival held in my own backyard, or in Speedway Meadow, which is certainly close enough. Five stages, all free, all day long. I’ll spend Saturday at the Star Stage with The Subdudes, The Knitters, John Prine, Keller Williams, Bella Fleck and the Flecktones, and if I can manage it, Los Lobos; that means I’ll be missing such luminaries as Michelle Shocked, T Bone Burnett, Steve Earl, Gillian Welch, Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby, and Big Dan Reeder, among many others. Sunday we’ll meet friends at the Rooster Stage for Jim Lauderdale, Welsch-Kane-Kaplan (heard them on KPIG recently and loved them immediately), Charlie Louvin, a songwriter circle with four dudes I don’t know much about, JORMA!, Dave Alvin, and (if I can stand it) Galdalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams. And that doesn’t include other luminaries on other stages, like Secret Life of Banjos, the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Emmylou Harris, Hot Buttered Rum, and Del McCoury – among many other others. Monday’s a holiday so I can sleep it off. I might need part of Tuesday too. It’s been a long week, and it’s going to be a long weekend.
