~ then fevers came, seemingly at random

Slowly, with certainty, day by day, I’m emerging from the woes of the past 27 months. I still have plenty to agonise over as I flail in my bed at night, but it’s of a far different order than what has gone before.

All that remains of the legal fiasco is a three-weekly visit to an unpleasant office in Oakleigh, where doors snap shut with the finality of jail cells. But after the many trials and tribulations of the recent past, I can take that n my stride.

Some time before the final hearing, with the help of toxic pharmaceuticals, I began a fresh assault on my liver complaint. (see ~my intimate blood borne saboteur.) The first few months were, as expected, nasty and debilitating. Anaemia. Neutropenia. Dysphoria. Then, around week twelve, they began to slacken off, almost to a level that was bearable. I was off-colour but I could manage the odd life activity. About this time that I even went to the Rainbow Serpent festival.

But, with the inevitability of death, a seed took root in my lungs. I began to cough, and to produce a lurid green sputum. Fevers came, seemingly at random and I took to my bed. For five weeks I was scarcely able to drag myself to the kitchen - although, every few days, I shambled around the block in a dark bulky overcoat, usually at night, to forestall any pooling of phlegm in my lungs. As my immune system was suppressed by the HCV drugs, I had little defence against the infection. Despite the heavy duty antibiotics I had been prescribed, the condition grew worse. I was getting just a little scared. I’d never been quite so sick.

Then my viral load results were unblinded. (I was on a clinical trial for a drug by Bristol Myers Squibb) From a starting point of 13 million evil bits per ml, it was reduced to 275. But, frustratingly, two weeks later, it was 500 plus. At this point, I ceased medications. Once again, on my fourth attempt, I faced failure, And this time I had been just a little concerned that they might kill me.

I decided to wait for some of the new remedies come on line - what doctors like to refer to as the ‘small molecule’ drugs. Telaprevir and Boceprevir are examples. There are nearly a hundred being researched (see hcvdrugs.com) and one day, in the not so distant future, I pray there’ll be regimens without such crippling side-effects.

So I lay back down, played video games and waited to get better.

Now it’s three or four weeks later and I’m waking up into the world. I’m exercising again. I’m brushing the dust off affairs that have not been touched in two and a half years. My garden is tugging at me, and I dream as I pluck the hated oxalis from the flower beds. I’m thinking about my house, how I might rid it of the teetering towers of books. Within the next few weeks I’ll be gnawing happily on my various, long neglected writing projects.

And the deadly spores ... even with binoculars I cannot see their dark, roiling, semi-sentient clouds on the horizon. I am even toying with the notion of breaking my long and bitter relationship with spasmo-nemigron.

~ my intimate blood-borne saboteur.

For better or for worse, I’ve enrolled myself in the trial of a new drug which may be a potent HCV inhibitor. It’s a triple therapy: as well as the study drug, I’m on the standard-of-care - peg-interferon and ribavirin: a toxic cocktail which tends to cause anaemia, flu-like symptoms and a genocide of the neutrophils, those fundamental elements of the innate immune system which are seen most often as a constituent of pus.

I’m desperate to shrug off the virus. It’s not killing me yet. For a fifty year old my liver’s in pretty good shape - according to the painful biopsy I had a few weeks ago. And my level of ALT (an indicator of inflammation) is within the normal range. However I’ve had the accursed invaders for upwards of a quarter of a century and there are rather a lot of them: at last count nine million viroids per millilitre of blood. The moment age begins to weary me, to weaken me, I fear they will grasp the opportunity to scour me from the surface of the planet - like a fastidious girlfriend with a box of tissues, scrupulously seeing to a clumsy boyfriend’s spilled red wine

Weird simile, I know. I’ll trust my subconscious and leave it there. Oh, and I was stung by a bee the other day. The hottest of those recent days. In Bruce Butler’s pool. A bee, of all things. There I was, lounging peaceably in one of Bruce’s vast and colourful collection of floatation devices when, lo, the underside of my upper-arm descended upon a bee. When did this last happen? Was I six? Younger perhaps? Of course, even a painful incident like this will not undermine my love and admiration for bees. The creature was acting purely out of instinct. I know that. Though I admit to taking a soupçon of pleasure in what must have been a painful, extended demise.

Polly, however, was out of the pool in a flash, pale as a sheet, trembling in the corner furthest from the water, demanding that we leave immediately. She is terrified of bees. And wasps. Snakes too, I think. (About a fortnight ago, I was walking with her and her friend Megan by Scotchman’s Creek when I spied what I believe to be a tiger snake side-winding across the path. I was a child when I last saw a snake down there.)

Just to finish up on the subject of bees ... Robert - as I have explained previously - cannot stop himself feeding the surly, obese, ill-humoured local population of brush-tailed possums. He built a beautiful possum box for them to inhabit - put it atop the shed in the hope they would cease forcing up the tiles and sleeping in the roof. Robert knows the ways of these possums. Intimately. He can tell them apart as they come for their nightly serving of putrid bananas. They seem to trust him too; he alone is allowed to stroke the fur of the matriarch’s offspring peeking from her pouch ...

Unfortunately, before the possums even noticed Robert’s labour of love, a swarm of honey-bees appeared and automatically made it their home. They became a fixture in the yard. During the Winter, for a time, the hive disappeared and shortly after we found pieces of depleted honeycomb amongst the dried leaves and the dust beneath the box. With Spring the bees returned, and they remain there now ...

I would love to steal a little of their honey... but I dare not risk it.

But back to the point ... this is my fourth attempt to flush the (stubborn genotype 1a) virus from my system. The first was a a monotherapy: interferon-alpha on its own (I responded, but barely). The second was trial of something called Rebif: interferon-beta, typically used for MS patients (The injections hurt like hell, I felt like shit and it did nothing). Then came the double-therapy - still in use - interferon-a and ribavirin (my viral load dropped from 10,000,000 to 1200, but then, like the Borg, the virus adapted and resumed its deadly replication).

Each of these attempts have excised more than six months from my life. It’s simply impossible for me to operate as usual while on these drugs. I’m not myself. I’m reduced, functioning at a minimum.

It’s a gamble: surrender these swathes of time in the hope that, later in life, I will avoid cirrhosis, or liver cancer - or else take a chance and let the virus do its evil work. Always a hard choice. And Polly must be considered. I don’t want to be sickly and weak when the time comes to wield an axe - or machete, or shotgun - when suitors come a-calling ...

I have benefited from the treatments. The most recent, though technically a failure, has caused my liver to show signs of improvement - despite my viral load careering back up to nine million.

This time round, at three weeks in (I’ve just had my fourth weekly injection of interferon-a) the side effects have been milder than I recall. The initial fortnight was bad - I might have had a poisonous creeping ague caught from some queasy, debilitated swine - but since then I’ve been normalising. There is the anaemia of course. It gets in the way of the exercise I rely on to bind my body and soul. But if this is the worst of it - this and the fatigue and the fogginess and the low-mood - then I will plough through the twenty-one weeks remaining with ease.

Perhaps the virus is already gone? The new drug - BMS 790052, which directly attacks a protein necessary for HCV replication (NS5A) - is supposed to work very rapidly. Perhaps I’m feeling better because I’ve cast it out at last. My dark passenger, as Dexter might put it. My intimate blood-borne saboteur.

Or perhaps I’m one of the unlucky ten percent who, instead of the new drug, are receiving a placebo?

~ pressure release

I realised the other day - perhaps belatedly - why I’m seeing so many old-fashioned cigarette cases, particularly in the hands of women. It’s the images of diseased flesh, of course, which the arbiters of social control place with good intent on the commercial packaging, Evidently, some have begun to weary of carrying about with them, on open display, these increasingly nasty, glutinous, decomposing visions of a possible future.

On a lighter note, my legal situation continues to look brighter. It’s strange that every single person I’ve told about my conundrums has said ‘you won’t lose your house, not for that’ - while the lawyers and the law itself said - if I was found guilty it would mandatorily be seized No discretion. Well my friends were right. The house appears safe. I can garden again. I can make it nice. I can get Robert to fix things without the horrible possibility looming that it would be torn from my hands.

Yesterday, in the County Court, I pled guilty to cultivation and possession, in exchange for a nullification of the trafficking and commercial supply charges. Now my friends are telling me I won’t go to jail. I hope they’re right. There’s still a fight to be had.

I’ve been obsessing over the re-lease of old material of late, and over music generally. The old Beargarden album ‘All That Fall’ is available, for better or worse, on Bandcamp.com and will spread to the other digital outlets. I was interviewed by some eighties aficionados the other day in my lounge room and they were terribly excited. Typically, the little black cat captured and tortured and consumed a skink in the background while we were talking. For those interested in Beargarden, there’s a bits and bobs album - The Word That Refers To The Word That Refers to Walt Disney - becoming available in the same place this week. It’s better than the other one, I think.

With the help of the redoubtable Simon Polinski, and his tremendous hospitality, we’ve been collecting up and mastering the Ears record (Dogs in Space). It looks like 16 tracks now and it also will also appear on Bandcamp within days.

We’re on the bill at Lucasaid. Thursday the 2nd December - one week from today

~ trypanophobia & the anti-vax fools

Why do we believe things despite a lack of evidence - or even in the face of overwhelming proof that we are wrong? Because it suits us to, I think, more or less.

What other reason can there be, down at the bone?

Are we too proud to admit we’re wrong? Too scared to break with our peer group? Or we’re paranoid? We’re making money? We like the idea of certain things being true because they fit with the kind of universe we’d like to live in? Or they feel right? Or they issue from the mouth of someone we admire? Or whom we respect? Or whom we find beautiful?

Generally, it all comes down to the same thing: if we break with evidence, we can, unlike scientists, believe whatever the hell we like. Unless, I suppose, we’re ignorant or mentally incapable of understanding the meaning and the implications of scientific proof.

So what lies behind the choice so many parents make to deny their children vaccination? Why have they chosen to believe that the MMR vaccine causes autism, despite there being not a skerrick of proof?

The luxury of resting ones child’s health on the back of an urban myth is allowed only by the vaccination of other children. And as such it is profoundly decadent. If these parents had lived through the heyday of smallpox or polio, their position would have been untenable - but the horror of those days has apparently been forgotten.

And if the vast majority of today’s children were not vaccinated and there was no establishment of ‘herd immunity’ then epidemics of debilitating often fatal diseases would sweep the country. There would be the same amount of autism but a whole lot more measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, tuberculosis and pertussis.

The anti-vax canard is already causing deaths. There have been outbreaks in new age havens like Byron Bay. A four month old baby has died from pertussis because of low vaccination rates. She was depending on herd immunity to protect her until she was old enough to be vaccinated, as are those who are immunologically compromised and cannot withstand a vaccine.

But, again, why choose to fly in the face of established evidence?

I’ve been wondering if it might come down to trypanophobia? (That would be the fear of needles, by the way) I wonder if Jenny McCarthy’s ‘mommy instincts’ were actually roused by the sight of cold steel not only penetrating her child’s pure flesh but pumping arcane scientific fluids into its system? To a parent’s eye it is indeed an apparent violation.

It’s not an insignificant phobia. 10% of us have it. And to quote Wikipedia “thousands of years ago humans who meticulously avoided stab wounds and other incidences of pierced flesh would have a greater chance of survival.” It takes a solid trust in medicine & science to shuck instinct and submit one’s child to such an experience, but at least it is a trust based in good solid evidence - not in quack doctors, net paranoids, and loopy new age energumens.

I think some parents simply choose not to yield their child to the medicated barb. The screaming of the babe trumps any amount of figures and statistics. But when mountebanks like Dr Wakefield give them sets of figures they can happily agree with, they seize on them, and so the thing grows.

However, there is a new delivery mechanism in the chute: a dermal 'nanopatch' developed by Professor Mark Kendle, from Queensland University's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. The patch promises to deliver vaccines far more effectively than the needle and with only a few minutes wear.

If this idea comes to fruition, I wouldn’t be surprised if it pulls the rug out from beneath the anti-vax movement. With the needle gone, there will be no critical emotional response holding up the whole insane edifice, and the nasty business might just crumble away.

People might then realise it was all just a very complicated way for selfish, cowardly parents to avoid having a doctor pierce the skin of their screaming child - for its own good and the absolute good of us all.

(PS. Sadly, I’ve just heard an ad for Channel 10’s 7pm program: To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? I hope to goodness the dangerous nutjobs aren’t getting equal time with the scientists again.)

(PPS. I just realised that I might have called this post 'The Needle And The Damage Done'.)

~ pink caligaric jug-eared

No point apologising for the wide intervals between my posts. No point promising to better my frequency, I’ll merely forswear myself. Life is too unpredictable and so am I. When things quieten, such as now, my mind turns to the Sails of Oblivion, but when I am harried by the innumerable demands of my mystifying existence ... it recedes.

I’ve finished my season performing for children as Roald Dahl’s BFG. Hundreds of litres of sweat passed through the fabric of my green giant’s costume. Many kilograms of snozzcumber popcorn spewed from my mouth onto a writhing, over-heated front row. I gave a thousand high fives, and hundreds of photos were taken of children in the presence of my pink, caligaric, jug-eared head. I damaged myself innumerable times attempting to match the energy of a cast which was, on average, less than half my age. Indeed, I went to school with the father of the actress Sophie Perillo, manipulator of an eponymous puppet which accompanied me through much of the show.

Actually, I think I’ve done something permanent to my knees. There’s a painful twinge now when I stand. In both of them. Have my seven weeks of delightful gamboling precipitated arthritis? [Not long ago, I espied an advertisement seeking applicants for a study on arthritis; the only prerequisite was a sore joint on the big toe of the right foot. I have that sore joint. I’ve had it for years. What does it forebode?] I still have a pain in my shoulder from Titus Andronicus. Perhaps I should be taking it easier. After all, I am approaching fifty. But then who cares?

My aim for the coming year is to raise fourteen thousand dollars, simple as that. The amount is a conservative estimate of what my lawyers will ask for representing me before a County Court judge and jury probably in early 2011. In some ways my life is on hold until then. I could be jailed and our house could be confiscated. Or I could come out clean. More likely the result will be something between these two poles.

In the face of this and other no less serious [but far more personal] difficulties, I’ve had to enact some complex mental and spiritual contortions to keep myself from sinking into a debilitating depression. In fact, strangely, I seem to be experiencing a kind of rebound. The year ahead is looking more positive than I would ever have predicted. The fright and horror of my legal problems appear to have splintered my inertia, and instead of running about in panic I seem to be taking what for me are calculated careful steps towards some sort of solution.

I’m coming to the end of Truth by Peter Temple, the crime novel I am narrating for Vision Australia. An invaluable experience. I think I would like to do more of it. I’m sure If I minimise my daily dose of spasmo-nemigron the gravel in my throat will recede to more acceptable levels. Through February, I am planning to at last complete a solid first draft of Ambergris, a play I’ve mentioned before in this blog. I have high hopes for it, which I believe are grounded in reason. I also have a slew of short fiction - speculative, mainstream and weird - which I’m going to polish up and spruik.

If you’re interested, I’ll be performing something at La Mama Poetica on February 8. [My name's not listed, but I'll definitely be there. There's also a Facebook group]]

In a book by the SF writer Charles Stross, I encountered the phrase ‘The troops entered wearing cream and beige office camouflage...’.

* 10 June 1981 Wednesday 1am

I behaved extraordinarily today. I calmly executed all the actions I had planned. Perhaps Jean Genet has been influencing me more than I realise.

Everything is pointing towards my successful netting of Carol’s flat. I think my mother can sense my determination – perhaps she will help. She’s already offered to pay the gas and electricity bonds.

My third night without alcohol. My weight has not ostensibly decreased yet as I’m still eating excessively. (I usually vomit to dispel some of it.)

To carry out my present plans I will have to control myself to an unusual extent.

(But I can feel my sanity creeping off into an evil-smelling hole – embarrassed)

*

Hmmm. Anorexia. Bulimia even. And long before those designators entered the common parlance. I was definitely obsessed with my weight for a time, although I was thin as a rake; I even went to the doctor once, worrying that my stomach was swollen with disease. It was my imagination, he told me.

But enough of that. Richard Lowenstein has uploaded some Ears clips and a mass of photos onto the Facebook page for Sails of Oblivion – The Gig.

Diaries of 1981

~ burning rhubarb on the beach & swine flu

I drove to Camberwell Market through the cold and fog this morning in search of books that might be suitable for my eBay endeavour. During my time there, from a number of sources, I learned some extraordinary things about the current swine flu pandemic.

For one, independent scientists are apparently saying that the flu couldn’t possibly be of natural origin, suggesting that it was deliberately created in secret US government laboratories. H1N1 is genetically a mixture of swine, bird and human influenza strains that have been brought together from distant regions of the globe, spliced and then released in nearby Mexico …

Now why, you might ask? And does its apparent lack of lethality mean that they have failed? Nothing so simple. One pundit told me that once you’re infected with the flu, only then can Tamiflu deliver its fatal blow – but this seems a little pointless, doesn’t it? Perhaps not, if you’re part of some secret cabal like, say, the Illuminati, who, recognising that climate change will destroy the Earth, are endeavouring to clear it of a good percentage of its human inhabitants.

The lack of fatalities was also explained to me by the fact that swine flu is just a trial run for some monstrous vital genocide to come …

What makes a little more sense is the suggestion that a lot of heavily connected industrialists are deeply invested in Roche pharmaceuticals [manufacturer of tamiflu] and have purposefully engineered the pandemic to force up stock prices. Among them, of course, are the likes of Rumsfeld, Cheney and, surprisingly, Barack Obama who is, I have learnt, just as much a neo-con puppet as was Bush.

I’m not sure that this works, at least in Australia, where tamiflu stocks, if I recall correctly, were about to be replaced anyway, as they are approaching their use-by.

When I looked on the web, the scenario became even more complicated. One site offers a sceptical list of potential conspiracy scenarios: the US anti-immigration lobby is attempting to close the Mexican border once and for all. PETA may be trying to make chickens and pigs too dangerous to exploit. Suspicion is also leveled at drug cartels, Islam, the media, mask manufacturers and the Catholic church. Additionally, I discovered a recommendation for something called oscillococcinum in case of influenza.

While I give this stuff very little credence at all, I do like to ponder about it and I respect the imaginative effort that's been made.

*

This last week I’ve been working hard on my benefit gig; hopefully a cast of characters will solidify through the coming days, but it’s almost certain to occur in early to mid August.

~ the stark light of reason

I can accept that Channel 7 attempted to show both sides in Sunday Night's live debate on the vaccine issue, but I believe that giving any credence at all to the anti-vaccination lobby is a danger. For a start, so bereft of evidence are the claims of loofah-heads like Meryl Dorey [of the Anti-Vaccination Network] that it’s equivalent to putting flat-earthers on the same level of credibility as, well … round-earthers,. What’s more – to quote my favourite podcast A Skeptic’s Guide to The Universe – there’s a death toll associated with their groundless accusations.

I must admit I’ve been of a particularly sceptical cast of mind recently. My ipod is mostly to blame. I began my exploration of podcasting by downloading my favourite radio programmes – The Science Show, All in The Mind etc. - but it wasn’t long before I discovered a huge untapped well of interesting stuff. Lately, at the expense of music, I’ve been listening to The History of Rome, The Material World, Hardcore History, Astronomy Cast and - most avidly of all - a suite of podcasts produced by the global sceptic movement. The Skeptic’s Guide, mentioned above, is fabulous, but there is also Brian Dunning’s Skeptoid, Skepticality and an Australian offering, The Skeptic Zone.

Scepticism is all about critical thinking and the scientific method, and now that I've saturated myself with the wisdom contained in these thoughtful programmes, I've realised that even I, who consider myself a pretty rational guy, have been guilty of a fair bit of fuzzy thinking and – under the stark light of reason - have had to abandon quite a few of my beliefs and preconceptions.

Vaccination is a big issue for the sceptic movement, primarily because of the urgency in countering the disinformation. I won’t get into the nuts and bolts here, you can find the accepted scientific truths at the sceptic sites above (or check Matt’s I like Portello blog which has a sceptical link list.)

Suffice to say it’s a dreadful disappointment that the anti-vaccination people are gaining traction here. In America, I can understand it; over there, mothers are getting their advice from ex-Playboy Playmate of The Year Jenny McCarthy and her partner Jim Carrey. Jenny’s ‘mommy instinct’ seems to trump any number of randomised, double blind clinical trials. I hoped Australians might be more discriminating, but no, Channel Seven’s presentation has proven me quite wrong, and another clutch of worried mothers will probably threaten the health of their own and other children by refusing vaccination. Already there have been fresh clusters of deadly diseases once considered under control. Whooping Cough, for instance, has reached epidemic proportions in Northern NSW. Northern NSW, you say? That would be Byron Bay, no? Second last of 118 divisions in vaccination rates.

I’ve developed a very high regard for the sceptical movement [skeptical in the US]. They’re doing an important job educating us in an era when murky thinking abounds. These days people seem more dismissive of science, even suspicious, when once the scientist was regarded almost with awe. We – the members of an advanced technological society – are increasingly prepared to take the word of kooks and quacks over that of people who are continuously broadening the horizons of humanity and furnishing our increasingly lengthy lives with so many wonderful gifts. Under the rubric of The New Age a cloud of unknowing has descended.

(I know science is responsible for some bad stuff too, but that’s another issue.)

It amazes me the amount of people I’ve encountered who have been fooled by the Hopi Ear Candle scam. Certainly not the Hopi, who had never heard of the things and have litigated to get their name removed from the packaging. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Another favourite target of the sceptics is homeopathy, a treatment modality which I’ve always been chary of. Take a smidgeon of some agent, say bach flowers, and dissolve them in a cup, say of water. Put a drop of that water in another cup of water, shake, then take a drop of this second cup and put it in yet another cup of water. Repeat this process five or ten times and what are you left with?

Logic would dictate that you are left with little else but water, and with this the homeopaths agree. Indeed, there is often not a single molecule of the original substance remaining, but the homeopaths are comfortable with this too. So what distinguishes the expensive curative you may have purchased from plain old water? Homeopathy claims that the efficacy of the remedy comes down to the water’s ability to hold the memory of the substance it contained.

In scientific terms, this is bunkum. There is not a shred of evidence for water having this ability, and water is something it is fair to say we understand pretty well. By the way, residents of NSW’s North Coast have been urged not to use a homeopathic whooping cough vaccine that has become available.

So, where was I? Proselytising, if I remember correctly. Channel 7! Stop putting ratings over community health. Parents, if you are disturbed by the fulminations of the anti-vaccinationists, take a deep breath and have a careful look at the established facts.

~ hair sauce

I remember little about Camberwell market. I was too tired. But I did come away with a wad of small denomination bills, a jacket heavy with coin, and far fewer books. No sign of the recession biting.

Polly, whose mother blanched at the idea of rising earlier than six o’clock, set up her own micro-stall, selling small shoes and videos. She made a few dollars too, but I was particularly intrigued by an obvious growth of her interest in commerce. With the prospect of a pay-off, any shyness evaporated, and she was happy to sit right up the front, hawking her wares with a combination of cuteness and rock bottom prices.

Countless times, I’ve tried to get her on stage in front of an audience, but failed. Perhaps I should have been offering a fee? I’m going to attempt to do a stall at Oakleigh market in a couple of weeks and this time I’ll set Polly up properly. My neighbouring stallholder at Camberwell – who was very impressed at Polly’s mercantile skills - suggested baking bread and getting her to sell it. Perhaps biscuits will do. Or chocolate crackles ...

With perfect timing, Barack Obama’s grandmother has just died. There was a sound bite from him on the radio this morning, culled from one of his speeches. He was speaking of his grandmother, who had a large hand in raising him. “She poured everything she had into me.”

I immediately felt inadequate as a parent. But, I guess, so would any other parent.

Again on the radio: a news item on the melamine milk-poisoning scandal. Apparently, in China, there are many other incidences of food substitution by greedy manufacturers. The reporter reeled off a list. What stuck in my mind was ‘soy sauce made from human hair’.

Could this truly be? I did some googling and found what was clearly the text I had heard broadcasted ...

‘They've found meat filled with hormones, eggs containing poisonous paint, soy sauce made out of human hair ...’

Are unscrupulous operators setting up deals with hairdressers? Sending their trucks on weekly hair pickups? Like the biodiesel freaks who buy used oil from fish and chip shops. [note: instant noodles are said to be fried with pre-loved oil sourced from hotels and restaurants]

Do impoverished families, with no other option, surrender their hair to the soy sauce people for a few measly yuan? In what system can human hair be a cheap substitute for soy beans? Or does it add a certain texture, colour or odour? Is there anything wrong with using it? I believe hair contains a fair amount of protein. Or is it just cannibalism?

And the process? What do they actually do to the hair to turn it into sauce? What’s the recipe? Is there a purpose built machine? A hairdresser once told me that by the end of the week the hair-bin at her salon was always very full, and if you burrowed right down to the bottom you would find that the oldest hair had begun to liquefy. Perhaps this is a clue ...

Investigating further, I learnt, on a particularly breathless site, that soy sauce was also made from blood clots and animal bones. I began to feel sick. Whatever the truth of it all, I think I’ll buy a better class of soy sauce from this time on.

PS: Interestingly, this site also speaks of ‘toxic fungi processed with trashed fungus products and soaked with ink’, ‘toxic shredded meat made from dead pigs and processed with bad bread crumbs,’ and ‘toxic duck blood made from cheap pig blood.’

~ The Den of Nargun

I know, another long hiatus, but this time the reasons are entirely different. For one, it’s been school holidays. I made another trip to Bairnsdale, this time just with Polly, and this time I remembered to bring my spasmo-nemigron …

We didn’t see a great deal of Tosie; she’s abandoned her work as a goat-wrangler and is picking broccoli in Lindenow. One of her close friends works at a vegetable packing facility in Bairnsdale proper, where salads are wreathed in plastic for the great supermarket chains. To my disappointment, I learned that produce grown near Perth arrives in Bairnsdale by truck, is packed and sent back out, by truck, to supermarkets in Perth. I shake my head. Even when it’s in their own financial interest, the combines can’t get it together to be efficient. At least, when emissions trading arrives they will have a of fat to trim.

They were a cool few days in the country … my fascination with birds is widening, intensifying, and there were many, many birds to enjoy. We spent a day wandering through a vast morass, where we saw sea eagles, swamp harriers, a giant nesting colony of straw-necked ibises, mallards, coots, shelducks, black ducks, swans. We smuggled out an impressive pelican skull, which Polly is taking to show-and-tell tomorrow. According to my beautiful new Encyclopaedia of Signs and Symbols, birds are symbols of the human soul, “representing goodness and joy, standing for wisdom, intelligence and the swift power of thought.” I am certain my latest obsession is entwined with this symbolism … dissolution into the upper air … severance of the bonds that hold me to the ground …

We detoured on the way home to Melbourne, visiting an aboriginal site called the Den of Nargun. It is a cave, hidden in a dark mossy valley just off the Mitchell River, where a ravening beast – equal parts stone and flesh – lies in wait to steal careless children.

Wednesday night is the opening night of Llareggub, an adaptation of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. It’s playing every night until Saturday at the Kaleide theatre at RMIT. It is directed by Lynne Ellis, who is the Director-in-Residence at the University.

There is a huge cast of characters. I am playing a Priest, an Undertaker, an Amorous Sailor and a Poisoner. I’ve been absolutely loving taking the trip into town and rehearsing, though, this late in the day, the stress is beginning to equal the enjoyment.

This may seem surprising, but I purchased my first ipod a couple of weeks ago. It’s a fabulous thing, a metallic blue nano, and I’ve been running it hot, reading to M83, walking to Duffy, riding to Beirut, falling asleep to William Burroughs reciting Junkie ... There’s an element of truth to what they say – it is like having a soundtrack to your life…

Since my last post, I’ve been on the most enduring health kick of my life. It started with Lee’s funeral, where I found my own mortality staring me in the face. And, as is my way, I’ve become obsessed. Not a drop of alcohol is passing my lips. I’ve been swimming, walking, drinking water, watching my diet with a gimlet eye … and I think it’s beginning to show. My wife says my moods are better, that I look better … well, I’m in a play with a couple of dozen spritely youth, I have to make an effort … but I’ve yet to find a balance, I don’t feel settled in my new self, I feel impermanent, and last night I had a dream in which I, and all my old friends, all with failing livers, were gathering together to make a final trip into a damp, cold concrete bunker half buried in the earth, and there to die. It was a horrible nightmare.

Things are a lot sweeter than that.

~ stag beetle: like it!

Without wanting to hex myself, things have been better than usual around here. Perhaps it’s the celebratory atmosphere that descends around hard rubbish time: with the purging of rotting, water-logged junk and the acquisition of fresh, interesting, new junk. I’ve found a working espresso machine, and a brand new trenching tool, and an abswing - which is actually a fairly useful bit of exercise equipment.


Also this fine piece of abandoned art. The lips are meaty with a fine gloss. Their texture seems almost porridge-like.


The larger of our two cats, Tweety Bird, has been bringing a new kind of trophy into the house. It is a particularly hideous grub or caterpillar, black, shiny and fat, which bursts with a spray of atramental ordure if stepped upon.



No one knows their origins, but I would like to think the garden [or wherever] is better off without them. Polly has suggested that the itinerant Tweety Bird travels at night to the Moon, where she captures these terrible grubs as souvenirs.

Robert’s possum friends – who visit him in the carport by night - have been breeding. The mother actually let him feel the bump in her pouch. Here is the bump a week or two later, on its mother’s back.


I’ve had my hair cut, by Lynne, who is back from Europe with Mitch. A group of us attended Robert Harvey’s valedictory home game at Docklands on Sunday. I’ve been taking long walks and doing laps … I’ve been swallowing garlic, fish oil and milk thistle. If life remains at this current pitch, it will only get better … One advantage: I don’t have to look far for the greatest threat to my fragile equilibrium – for I am the past master of self-destruction and insidious auto-sabotage!

Last thing. What we believe to be the final element of the Yan-Yan puzzle has fallen into place.

~ jack & lee

Every so often, my meagre social calendar yields an event which calls together a certain cabal of friends and colleagues who were closest twenty to thirty years ago. Troy's memorial was a perfect example. It’s one of the small consolations of the aging process. The cud of memory is chewed. A certain camaraderie is shared. People are reassured to see they are not the only ones whose bellies have swollen, whose hair has thinned and fallen out, whose flesh has begun to sag off the bone - and whose minds are drifting into a null-space leached of inertia and wracked by dread of the future. Indeed, it is a wonder we recognise each other at all …

Phone numbers, email addresses and business cards are exchanged. Secreted in drawers. Forgotten …

On Sunday evening my dear and reliably infuriating friend Jack Strocchi was married to Claire at St Joseph’s Church in Port Melbourne. I won’t bother describing the wedding, save to mention that Claire looked beautiful, her dress was a deep ocean blue, and Jack did a magnificent job passing himself off as a normal man. [Remember John Cleese slamming the kitchen door behind him and hissing ‘psychiatrist!’’?]

Here, the cunning polycephalic bridegroom: Jack Strocchi.


Claire, his wife, and ever wonderful Marina, his sister ...



I was sitting downstairs waiting for the reception to begin, speaking with some people I hadn’t seen in decades, when the subject of Hep C upreared its ugly head. People are never shy about bringing it up with me – after all, I suppose, if they have it, then it would be a cruel twist of fate if I did not.

Previously, horror stories of cancer and death have filtered in from the periphery, but this year, like the proverbial slouching beast, the news is slinking closer and closer to home. I learned of an old acquaintance who was unable to attend the wedding because he was in hospital, seriously ill, as a result of his HCV.

It would be an understatement to say that got my attention Dark shadows milled at the corners of my vision.

I have always dreaded the time when that disease comes home to roost, mowing down half the people I know and, of course, myself. By the end of Jack’s reception, (not to put a damper on it, Jack,) I was ready to believe that time had come.

It was like a faint echo of New York in the 1980s. Hep C was by far the most common conversation starter. Every second knot of guests was discussing it. Comparing hospitals, treatments. Chinese herbs, news of the new fibro-scanner at the Alfred. And fully half of them were nursing a poisonous chalice. Or was that just me?

Sad to say, there is nothing more boring than a disease one has been knowingly infected with for twenty years. I’ve endured three long, gruelling, partially effective interferon treatments. I’ve spent a thousand sullen hours turning over its consequences in my mind...

Until the other night, I was not exactly in denial, but perhaps ... semi-denial. I take some care of my body. Milk thistle. Reduced animal fats. Exercise. Water. But never enough. I’m always working towards a stricter regime, falling away then firming up again. Now things will change. There is something ghastly on the doorstep.

But, regardless of the subject matter, I did enjoy speaking with all those ancient heads; not all of who, I must point out, have compromised livers. It’s a comradeship induced by time. Michelle Finnigan, who by extraordinary coincidence has been seeing Paul Storm, one of my best friends from school, and a brother-in-arms at St Kilda football matches. The Smoljo brothers, again friends from school. Jack’s dear sister Marina who lives and paints in the Alice. Ruth Learner, Amanda Florence, Bo, Georgia, Dolores, Chane Chane ...

*

Lee Smith.

When I first met him he was a beautiful boy, a David Bowie. It was at a house in Spensley St, West Melbourne, where Lisa Gerrard, (also a magnificent youth,) lived with Ronnie Recent, frontman for The Marching Girls and whose true name was Brendan Perry. (This pair were later to form Dead Can Dance; Lisa would develop her preternatural voice, which even at this time was breathtaking.)

Three of us, myself, Lisa and Lee, spent a long, uncomfortable night in a claustrophobic loungeroom, waiting on the delivery of mood enhancing drugs. Over many many hours, we clung to a thread of hope that something would come through. We were not addicts at the time, just desperate. Or at least I was, I can’t speak for Lisa or Lee.

Eventually, the dull early light began to leach through the windows. This was it for Lee, he’d wasted enough time. I walked with him part of the way home, before returning to wait some more. It seemed very bright outside and Lee looked just right, very cool. I wanted to know why he’d piked. For years and years I’ve remembered his response verbatim, but no longer. I used to use it as a personal aphorism, but perhaps it’s no longer relevant. He said that he would prefer to wait for another day. He would rather be ‘alive and high’ than fucked out, weary and stoned. If you get my drift ... In the original it was very quotable ...

Long ago, Lee drifted permanently from my world. I can't remember the last time I saw him This week I heard of his death - liver cancer, Hep C, 54 and clean for a long, long time. The only memories that come are those of decades ago. The best is of a band he had in the early eighties, Junk Logic - one of the so-called ‘little bands’. At the Market hotel, Lisa trilling like an alien, playing her yangqin, Lee torturing a monstrous, outlandish sound from his guitar. He had the best right hand, so quick, so accurate, so confident. His left hand, well, I think Lee had an aberrant idea of what a guitar was actually for. There was no tonal scale, no self-consistent set of frequencies in the universe which those devilish fingers could not undo....

Lee was unlucky. Perhaps the virus will get the rest of us too, ahead of age and all the other manners of death, but judging from that wedding night, there is a fair bit of raging yet to do against the dying of the light ...

And just in case you need cheering up, click my next post.

~ slow and stuttering

It’s been a slow, stuttering week. Some grinding progress made. Some good things coming forth.

The results of my blood tests came through. The state of my liver is better than I had expected. [Although my viral load remains significant, my ALT is within normal range.] I’ve taken steps with regard to my little problem with the insurance company. I’ve located a financial councillor whom I hope will be able to mediate for me, eliminating the possibility of my ever having to speak directly with a debt collecting cyborg. I have been swimming assiduously, walking Polly to school. Doing the little things that may help lengthen my stay upon the Earth.

On Tuesday, Polly and I went to the opening of an exhibition [Beyond The Window] at Bus at 117 Little Lonsdale Street. Erin Ender, whom I recently saw married, collaborated in a neat little installation viewed through antique stereoscopic viewers. Commanding colours. Fascinating depth. Winsome aeroplane. Martina Mrongovius, a tall red haired woman with a translucent complexion whom I met at Erin and Henrik’s wedding, presented a series of complex holograms. There were eight, I think, all with that elusive quality which hologram technology imparts. There was a time when creating such things would have been prohibitive financially – now it appears the art form is within reach. I didn’t have time to inspect them closely, as the room was rapidly filling with chattering shadows with wineglasses. Martina informed me that the crepuscular lighting was her preferred luminal environment. I, too, once favoured the twilight world, but as my vision grows dim I find myself increasingly drawn to the brightness. Martina’s holograms were gleaming, intriguing and green. The backgrounds shifted through long arcs, exposing more and more detail as one changed one's point of view. Vague haunted-looking figures in the foreground performed puzzling tasks …


Sam Bond was there with little Scarlett coddled at her vast maternal breast. Motherhood seems to be doing nothing but good for Sam. Lynne was present too and suggested that Polly and I ought serve with her as a test audience for Richard Higgins’ tour of Melbourne, [a comedy festival event]. The three of us followed Richard around the city – or rather his persona, Richard Richards, a safari-suited trainee tour-guide with the ability to strike dynamic poses and an unnerving giraffe-character perched atop his staff of power. This was just a dry run, but I think the end result will be funny. I’d never noticed how utterly monged out were the pack-camels of Burke and Wills…

At one point we were noticed by a Koori gentlemen. Having observed our inspection of the Aztec nipple fields of Federation Square, he offered his own contribution to the tour. He acted out the dreamtime story of a white emu who had come to banks of the Yarra – at that time closer to Flinders Street - for water, but looked up in the direction of South Melbourne to see the eruption of a mighty volcano. The white emu ran for his life, escaping by the skin of his teeth - but was daubed by the raining ash that was to colour his feathers for ever more.

I wonder how far back the oral history of the Aborigines takes us? I have heard that the Mornington Peninsula [which more or less starts in the direction he was pointing] is a lava plain – but that happened a very very long time ago.

Greyish Blackish, the kitten, is settling in well, leaping about the lounge room like a thing possessed - from couch to coffee table to dinner table to floor, and back again ad infinitum. Tweety Bird [our other cat] liked to be held, but Greyish Blackish does not. Tweety used to freak out at her image in the mirror, taking it for another cat. Greyish Blackish reacts quite differently, seeming to understand that the reflection is imitating her movements and turning it into a game. Fascinating how personalities – both human and animal – manifest themselves from the very beginning.

I’ve been a little less opinionated this week. Whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know, but it’s probably the reason behind my infrequent posting.

If you’re wondering about the images, they’re photos of some of my stuff. Excluding the brushtails, of course. Robert has been feeding them out in the carport as he toils by night, feeding them fruit that is too decayed even for him… I’m surprised they can stomach it… The big one is the mother, the small one her baby, which until recently was riding on her back.

~ the letter

The letter I have been so dreading arrived on Thursday – an envelope with the logo of insurer AAMI in the upper left corner. A warning within. I will be expected to fork out roughly eight and a half thousand dollars for impacting the rear of someone’s car.

I had been expecting a figure of the sort. I’d put big numbers in my head so that I wouldn’t be too shocked when the news came – whilst half hoping it would be somewhat lower…

Well, it may not come as a surprise to you that I don’t have, at this moment, even one per cent of $8,500. Indeed, it’s not all that far below the amount I live on – reasonably happily – per year. I long ago realised that fulfilling my life’s dream and making truckloads of cash were never going to happen simultaneously.

The best I can do with my predicament is – as Helen from the Lion’s Club op-shop in Mt Waverley advised me – not to stress. On Monday, I’m going to get on the phone and work out the best response. Maybe I could pay them five dollars a week for the rest of my life …

Strangely, given my anxious nature, it hasn’t gotten to me all that much. Just another black cloud of potential hanging high above me in the stratosphere. Like hepatitis, I suppose – and the chance that I’ll develop cirrhosis or cancer.

I visited the liver clinic at the Alfred last week. It’s been some time since my last interferon treatment, [I’ve had three,] and I’d been hearing rumours of new medical developments. Alas, nothing that could help me right now.

They are currently trialling a triple therapy, adding a protease inhibitor to the interferon/ribavirin regimen, but are only accepting ‘naïve’ patients. ‘Naïve’ means previously untreated. I am a ‘Relapsing’ patient - I almost cleared the virus, but it rebounded.

My doctor, [Keith Noack,] isn’t terribly upbeat about this new treatment anyway, so it’s no great tragedy that I’m ineligible. I just have to keep doing what I can to mitigate the effects. Diet and exercise…

In truth, despite everything, I’ve had a good week. I’ve done laps almost every day, been walking Polly to school then riding home on the old mountain bike which Lynne recently gave me. I’ve been working diligently on Ambergris, my play, and doing what I can to get myself out of my current [non-$8,500 related] financial pit. This means, as it usually does, getting back on Ebay and selling books. You’ll find me there under the name of Lampsucker.

~ green rapture: the king of imaginary drugs

‘Lindsay’s attention was sharpened to a cutting edge by a drug known …. as Green Rapture … without volition, his eyes glazed over. a long moment passed in which he was silent, empty, thinking nothing at all … at last, blinking, he came back to himself. He reached reflexively into his jacket pocket and produced an enamelled inhaler. Two long whiffs of Green Rapture brought interest back into the world ..

Green Rapture washed gently over Lindsay, a tingling wave of curiosity. Green Rapture was the ultimate anti-boredom drug, the biochemical basis of wonder boiled down to its complex essence. with enough gr a man could find a wealth of interest in his own hands. Lindsay smiled with unfeigned delight.

‘Marvellous,’ he said.

From Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling

*

There have been many outlandish substances described in books and film - but if I was given the chance to actually consume one, it would be Green Rapture.

Bug powder? I can take it or leave it.

Melange? Vurt feathers? Polydichloric euthimal? Mandrapordeum? Hellflower? Omegendorph? Drencrom? Nuke? Can-D? Certainly, they sound intriguing …

But I want Green Rapture.

Curiosity is the air that I breathe. If I lose it, as I often do - in the grey days after using heroin or too much alcohol, or after some catastrophe - I feel worthless, an ineffectual husk. Indeed, my level of interest in things is a good indicator of my health overall. When I suffer depression, nothing is worth investigation; if I read, I read to escape not to learn. When I’m sprightly, then the world gets fascinating.


Early in the nineties I began to hear the first whispers of Prozac. I crossed my fingers. Could they really have developed a drug that did nothing else but make you happy? I bought a hardback copy of Kramer’s ‘Listening to Prozac’ and read it cover to cover. I nodded with approval at the cries of outrage from the CCHR [Citizens Commission for Human Rights]: if the Scientologists were so worried, then it was a good sign. They consider effective psychiatric drugs [and psychiatrists] a threat to their bottom line and will do anything in their power to malign them.

Thoroughly inculcated by Roche’s pre-publicity, I organised a medical appointment. I recall Lynne’s amused expression as I assumed a mantle of deep depression before entering the doctor’s room, where I was to obtain the precious script for a drug which at that time required special authorisation.

Ten days later, the effects kicked in. I woke on the grey couch in my office and the world was glistening with wonder. It was much like a trip, but without the paranoia, or any heavy physical effects that might leave you with a hangover. A subtle, clarifying filter had been placed over the world.

In this state, I wandered out of my office, on to the street and down to river where Moomba was in full flight. I must have spent hours there, exhilarated by the colour and the noise, fascinated by faces, trees, and scintillating metallic balloons.

Oddly, the only actual image I recall is that of a man putting something in a rubbish bin …

But with each day the effect faded, until I felt normal. Better, but normal. I could never achieve that same state again with Prozac or its cousins. I use Zoloft at the moment, and every so often, upon waking, I feel an echo of that fantastic morning.

I hadn’t found my Green Rapture, and I doubt I ever will. I’ll have to rely on natural means to generate the curiosity I need.

I worry about my wife, though. So often, she complains of being unmotivated, of not being interested in anything, of jealousy at how obsessed I get by things. Generally, she seems to prefer physical over mental pleasures - and the more easily come by the better. I worry that if she cannot develop a life of the mind – beyond the phantasmagorical world of her fantasies – then she’ll never be able to fully exploit her tremendous talents as an artist. Certainly, she is more intuitive than cerebral with her work; it comes from the heart and soul rather than the mind – but the heart and soul have interests too. And if she’s interested in nothing, then how will she even get brush to paper?

Depression has a lot to do with it; but depression can work both ways. It can lead to the loss of engagement, but when it’s resolved and things seem normal, then realising you have no abiding interests in life can lead you straight back into the black room.

She needs Green Rapture as much as I crave it. Curiosity is an elemental human quality; it led us to become what we are. Lose it and you lose an element of your soul.

~ a bodiless revenant

There is a long cycle that rises from relative calm to acute crisis and back again. Currently, thankfully, I’m enjoying one of those more peaceful times.

As usually happens, when I have time to reflect, I begin to worry about my health. I’m too mentally disorganised [and sick] to become a genuine hypochondriac, but I give it a decent shove.

[The origins of the word hypochondriac are described in the book on Mesmerism I’m reading. Mesmer placed the body’s ‘equator’ and ‘common sensorium’ at the hypochondria on the sides of the upper abdomen. Hypochondriacs were people with unbalanced humours who ‘elicited sympathy, not the scorn reserved for malades imaginaires’.]


First, I attempt to reign in my Nicorette habit. I gave up smoking aeons ago, replacing cigarettes with chewing gum. But I’ve been unable to shrug the actual nicotine addiction. If I don’t watch it, I’ll grind up a forty dollar packet of 4 mg gum in less than a week, and that’s not good for the health or the budget. It results in palpitations and bad head. My answer is to snip the tabs into four pieces and ration these out, with the vague intention of one day giving them up entirely …

Then I begin to worry about my fitness and my heart. I have a membership at the Monash Uni pool, which I maintain whether I go or not. Lately, I’ve been badly remiss in that area. My stomach is sagging. I have little endurance. But at last I’ve returned to the water, where I feel the most alive. I’ve been swimming all week and am just beginning to feel less like a bodiless revenant.

Then I will dwell upon my liver, my Achilles heel. Over time, I’ve endured three long and nightmarish interferon treatments in an attempt to rid my system of the HCV virus, but only the last – a combination therapy with ribavirin - came close to doing any permanent good. Tantalisingly close, actually. I’m sure that the next improvement in treatment will see a cure - so with that in mind I’m returning to the liver clinic, to once more bite the bullet.


My appointment is in a few months and in that time I’ll work to prepare myself. Though these days I’m generally an abstemious drinker, even smaller amounts can worry the liver. I’m determined to teetotal. And I’m going to enforce a dietary regime which I’ve tried and failed to maintain for decades. Minimal animal fats. Water by the bucket load. Ersatz coffee …

All these ersatz substances. Ersatz cigarettes. Ersatz heroin. Ersatz cheese. Ersatz peace of mind … I can deal with it, if it helps me feel human… I love the word ersatz by the way. I learnt it from Philip K Dick, who had a fascination with the German language. Literally, it means replacement or substitute, but it came into English use during the World Wars, when the desperate Germans, deprived of raw materials, used what they had to develop substitutes: ersatz rubber, ersatz heating-oil, ersatz tea, ersatz coffee …

People describe one of the symptoms of Hep C as ‘brain fog’. Well I’ve got that in spades and it erodes my ‘basal hedonic tone’ [this describes whether you feel happy or sad]. I’m sure it interferes with my work, and I’m sure that my daily dose of Spasmo-Nemigron [aka suboxone] is also partly to blame. And that’s another thing I have to address.

It was around this time last year that I decided I’d had enough of the sleepy emotionless cotton-wool world of buprenorphine and tried to come off. Obviously, I failed, but the urge is uprearing again and I’m hot to make another attempt. If things can stay commonsensical and calm in my life, then I might have a chance.

The Grey Creek

I am doing all the right things; I am taking long walks along the Grey Creek; I am swallowing fish oil and regulating my intake of red wine; daily, I vitamize many wholesome ingredients into a nutritious drink - yet the workings of my mind remain sluggish and without direction.

In nine days time I am performing the role of Prospero in a production of The Tempest and I have a massive quantity of lines, few of which I have by heart. As quickly as I learn them, my mind releases them. It's like handling a slimy fish. There's no traction there. Yet, learn them I must. I cannot disappoint Lynne, the director, nor the others involved. No matter that it is a small student production. No matter that its standards are not quite professional and that there's no payment. I must yet prevail. I urge myself with the image of my wonderful costume - the shimmering silver jumpsuit, the towering silver boots... I shall be the cynosure! All shall cower at my majesty!

So, as I follow the meanderings of the Grey Creek, I mumble to myself, concentrating on my task. The creek exists in the buffer zone between a howling motorway and the dormitory suburb of Mt Waverley. I have known this creek all my life. I knew it before it was landscaped, formed into wetlands and filtration ponds, before it hosted at least five species of water-birds. When I was a child it was a pungent sudsy vein transporting vile substances through poisoned quagmires, bestrewn with blackberries and rusted machinery, to the Yarra and thence to the Bay. When I dream of the Grey Creek and its surrounds, they are always in this original state.

Soon, my wife will be home and I must show, not only strength, but compassion. She has been labouring desperately against the Spores, and has found the will to form a battle plan. It is a poor one, I think, for it relies on strengths I doubt she has - but some independent will remains and that is something to be thankful for. I'll wind up fifty and looking like one of your old girlfriends, she said today. A wise observance. Many of my dearest friends, both male and female, have been slowly mutilated in long and strenuous conflict with the Deadly Spores. The Spores treat their enemies and their slaves with an equal lack of pity - and it is not just the flesh they sour ...

>As with age their bodies uglier grow, so their minds canker ...

Then there are those who will never live to suffer old age.