Note to self

Got some of the stitches out today. The rest come out next Wednesday. And yes. The biopsy was positive for Myoepithelial carcinoma again. This time they increased the margins by a lot. I'll have a CAT scan in a few months to see if there's anything left. That's it.

Harbor watch for the predominately inattentive

It looks like a small city at sea, 17 smoke gray stacks against the flat horizon, and the deep voice of a fog horn taunting me with intriguing blasts. This particular freighter has been parked at the mouth of the Tagus since I got up this morning. It must be waiting for a dock to open. Generally the ships just chug by.

I keep binoculars nearby, always hoping for a glimpse of arrivals and departures. I don't have a camera these days otherwise maybe I might catch an interesting photo now and then. As you see, at this distance, my poor phone can't make much sense of things.

M.'s position is that I've never learned any of the cameras I've had so why waste the money. Ok. He's partly right. I haven't studied the technical side of photography but I do have a decent eye, plus it's something of a meditation for me and, as someone with acute ADHD-PI (PI being "predominately inattentive") I can use all the help I can use and I can use photography because it shows me how to focus exactly on what's in front of me then rewards me with a photo to see if, in fact, I did. If you're not ADHD that probably doesn't make much sense.

Radioactive again

I'm typing this single-handed and breakfast with the other. In a few minutes I begin a six hour fast before this afternoon's CAT scan. Afterwards I will be radioactive for a few hours. Creepy.

Another lump has appeared on the back of my neck which must be removed. Most likely it's the same cancer removed last summer, the Myoepithelial carcinoma. We'll know definitely, one way or the other, after it's removed and biopsied. Today's scan will tell us whether or not it's anywhere else.

Submissions update

In January I submitted material to four different publications . . . Rattle, StepAway Magazine, Agni, and Almanac for the Anthropocene: A Compendium of Solarpunk Futures. So far, two have replied . . .  Agni and StepAway. Agni was a rejection but with a personal note encouraging me to submit again. StepAway, a London based online publication, accepted the piece I submitted and the editor included a very nice note. The poem, Afterimage, will be in issue 31. A cool extra about StepAway is that they notify authors of successful submissions within 28 days. The wait to hear back about a submission can drag on for months, sometimes years, so much apprecited.

Rattle is still "in-progress" which is more common. I got their auto-reply immediately but, so far, it's been 41 days and have heard nothing else. Their average reply time is 119 days so it's still very much within their parameters. One thing I like about Rattle is they are writer friendly. While they don't accept work that's been previously published in print or online, they don't consider self-publishing to blogs, message boards, or social media as publication. Most magazines still cling to the tyranical opinion that posting something on your blog renders it unacceptable. Publishers are nothing without something to publish yet they demand fealty from the writer as though they are some medieval Lord land owner or King. My poetry blog gets about 200 visits a month and most of those are probably bots and crawlers so WTF!

As for Almanac for the Anthropocene: A Compendium of Solarpunk Futures, that is a one-time publication by Wagner & Wieland. They describe a solarpunk as someone who "imagines new futures in the shadow of and in opposition to environmental collapse, then works to create those futures". I haven't heard anything back from them yet, and may not. They're not soliciting poetry but I sent them one I wrote about the Anthropocene anyway. Submissions are closed . . . "unless you have a recipe/blueprint/direct action–basically, anything except essays. If you have something that might work, please feel free to contact us until March 15th".

Tuesday with questions

I am coming to terms with the possibility that Trump's so-called "luck" (aka fix) may not run out. As the dim bulb son of a pimp he was born with a trust fund for a diaper and grew up to become a money laundering racketeer somewhat centrally located in the international web of sleaze-bag politicians, two-bit dictators, crooked banks, hired killers, media whores, spineless sycophants, fascists, racists, professional criminals, conniving psychopaths, zealots, morons, and reckless fucktards of every persuasion, and corporate-protected billionaires dedicated to plundering the planet until the last possible moment, and all looking for a mound to fly their flag. 

This asshole may just ride his bloody rainbow straight to the grave but I comfort myself with the idea that his spawn will not be so lucky. Don Jr? Jarad and Ivanka? Eric? Lara? Barron and Ivanka? Who are they as the eco-system collapses? They are baggage. Yesterday's news. Leeches. Big Don dies and who gives a fuck about the "Trump brand"? Really, who gives a fuck about the "Trump brand" now? 

What happens when their criminal network falters, as countries increasingly struggle with economic uncertainty, increasing numbers of climate refugees, as sea surge increases, as drought, plagues, and wildfires become more common and intense? What will they do? Will they still be flying around the globe on the American taxpayers dollar like they are now, cutting lucrative deals for the Trump Organization?

What will any of us do?

Checklist

Molly, Swami, and Juan Carlos

 M. Lee finally officially became a Portuguese resident today. It shouldn't have taken so long but we happened to apply for our visas in San Francisco last June just when the Consulate was changing systems. Our paperwork got lost in the shuffle for awhile. They were especially slow issuing my visa so my appointment at SEF isn't until next month.

We've been traveling for a long time and have always kept half an eye on where might be a good place to move, to make a base outside the US. In 2015 we settled on Bangkok but it's so polluted there that M. got a terrible lung infection and nearly died. After that, we made our way back to Europe but didn't get serious about Portugal until 2017. That's when we decided it could be the place, and by extension the EU. A lot of questions had to be answered, problems resolved, and a lot of changes to deal with. It's been more like changing lives than just moving somewhere and today is a long awaited plateau along the way. Well, not exactly. I'm not there yet. We'll see if SEF accepts my application. If they do, it's one more thing we can check off the list. After that it will still another five years until we can actually apply for Portuguese citizenship but this is a milestone. Between now and then, we'll have to learn Portuguese, which I'm not looking forward to, but it will be a good mental exercise to become at least transactionally literate.