Searching for an era

A Swiftian journey from soap operas to body rashes to the all consuming power of kittens

Photo by Cristian Escobar via Unsplash

Hello again! My long ago, previous declaration to make this a bi-weekly publication called my own bluff and predicted what felt like the beginning of the end. Thank you to those who reached out in the time since, the encouragement was enough to (eventually) get me digging back into that Good Marrow. Thanks for reading and welcome if you have newly subscribed. As always, this is a reader-supported newsletter so thanks for reading, supporting, and sharing.

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The reason that I stopped writing here was actually because I had been writing too much elsewhere. I had picked up a day job writing for a company that created something akin to the intersection of podcasts and audiobooks. I called them my soap operas because they were episodic audio stories designed to never end. They were juicy, sultry, plot-on-steroid sprints through every dramatic trope you could imagine. Affairs, accidental siblings, unknown children, and lots of marriages-of-convenience to rich people (how convenient). I will not say it was good writing, but it was a paycheck.

Like all things online these days, the point was to keep people hooked. And so I wrote. Thousands of words per day, eventually me editing a few other writers to make it thousands more. Characters and plot twists and pearl-clutching cliffhangers (a generous characterization) were wrung out at a breakneck pace that directly correlated with the quality of said stories.

Then overnight I was laid off. A plug was pulled and thousands and thousands of words vanished into thin air. Hours past and hours future were erased or never born, myself annoyed at being annoyed at the loss of these very rushed ideas that I had spent hard-earned time on. All in the name of more, more, more.

But in the end it was a job. And like many others, it has come and gone. In the aftermath, my creative fields went fallow. Writing lost some of its luster. I entered a spiral of malaise engendered by Hollywood’s new, even-more brutal inertia and an existential inquiry into the value of words.

I had exhausted so many. And for what? And for why? Per this substack, I’m in a good place with cancer. So what more is there to say?

For the time being, I enjoyed the atrophy. I lounged about and cruised job listings. I began courses in data analytics and wondered if words’ antonym, numbers, would cure me. Maybe I was never a words guy, maybe I’d been doing it wrong all this time.

On LinkedIn I learned new words for employment requirements and job responsibilities that seem to have been created in order to be deciphered and extrapolated into more and more bullet points. It’s low hanging fruit for a “writer” to poke fun at “corporate” culture but I’ll do it anyway.

Still, the glut of disinterest can only last so long. Life happens and if words are the data of life, then the data must be analyzed. And life has happened. Slowly and without direction. A feeling of transition. Of wondering what happens next. In, or of, a season. And then, of course… There is a word for this. It’s right there.

I imagine myself at Taylor Swift’s global domination tour, having flown my wife out to Prague or the capital of Finland or wherever tickets are cheaper across the world instead of forty-five minutes away from our house. I am in the audience and Taylor has just finished “Our Song” and is wearing the album-appropriate tour regalia. Then the lights shift and the stage tilts. Gasps and cheers, transformative visuals and costume changes… Everyone knows what is happening - and when she dives into the stage or floats away on a string or Travis Kelce performs a magical disappearing act in a penguin tuxedo - I imagine that I am her and I roll frictionlessly into my next era.

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Our body’s own eras exist in micro and macro ouroboros. Our inner workings are dictated by cellular life seeing birth and death and birth again over hours or days or weeks. Meanwhile our outer selves smile and count time in birthdays and life events.

Our own compilation of eras are personal - both in duration and reason. For me, high school feels like an era. Cancer feels like an era. There was also a tenor saxophone era that went on for a surprising amount of time but that’s for another post.

But inside of us, in our bellies and guts where eras don’t get to be cutesy or cottagecore, our bodies work in routine and, ideally, regulated intervals. Our shortest cellular life cycle hails from cells in our “intestinal epithelium” (quotes so you can imagine me saying it slowly), which are alive for a brief nine to ten hours.

Skin cells, perhaps the cells we are most familiar with living and dying — as their dead are offered up as the dust of life — have an average lifespan of 4-6 weeks. I have particular interest in this interval as I sit here typing after finally washing off a head-to-toe application of steroid ointment (ointment being a deeper, more infernal layer of hell than “cream” or “lotion”).

For whatever reason, two weeks ago something set off my cobbled-together immune system, forcing me to watch in slow-moving horror as a rash consumed me like the plague. I have been around every rashy block and while it is not a new visual or sensation, it is a dreaded one. It is an era of revulsion, summed up by a Quasimodo aversion to mirrors. Or if I gaze into one long enough, a Carrie-esque desire for it to shatter into flames.

But thankfully after a number of immobile days coated in clear medical pudding, the rash is leaving and I am returning.

For anyone who has dealt with recurrent illness, there is a Spring-like rush as whatever malady fades and some sense of self returns. Gratitude for health is its own rush of endorphins and gratitude for normality is even better.

The immune response or inflammation or molecular invaders have receded, but it left behind a stark reminder of the before times. Paralyzed in bed, wondering when whatever “it” was would end or if it would end or if it would lead to some other headache or specialist or appointment that would suck me of time, money, and sanity — the rash surfaced and spread as a very visual reminder of that thing, that cancerous origin story that lurks somewhere below the surface, a sharp reminder that my life is governed by different, more opaque, and more unknowable rules.

But after spinning on its axis, the dice roll turned favorable and the rash era ended. I will file it away as another of many detours, this time diverted from medical attention because of a fortuitous inventory of steroid pastes and jellies and available refills.

Though the real truth was that medical attention was a laughable thought because the soonest I could get in to see a doctor or dermatologists was either in two weeks, in October, or in November. Each phone call with each polite scheduler was a very mindful and very demure reminder that our medical system is ill equipped for accurate, timely care and well equipped to send you down those WebMD google-holes they tell you not to go down.

So energy was expounded, decisions were made, medications were applied because why not, and predictions were thrown into the air and read as tea leaves scattered through a scattered mind… And soon it was over.

It’s never over in an instant but sometimes it does end. And one hour or day or year later it fades and you might find yourself in conversation with yourself or with someone you love and you might remember that thing as a moment in time, as a place you had been.

Which is to say — I’ve actually seen Taylor Swift before. I’ve lived an era. We saw her at the Rose Bowl on her Redemption tour. Hell of a performance but it was a logistical nightmare and an experience that we both swore we would never do again.

But that’s the thing— there’s always another era. Though in life you never know which one you’ll get.

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As my rash faded and normality returned, I began my search for the perpetrator of the crime. Prone, paralyzed, and still gelatinized for safety— I ran back through every encounter that could have caused my skin to become patchwork. Emily quizzed me on any new medications I had taken, new detergents or soaps I had used, or new interactions - and the evidence eventually revealed itself as I traced the crime scene that was my body.

A scratch, interior left wrist, deep enough to draw blood, caused by… A cat. But how?

Over a year ago, our dear cat Maynard departed this life. I’ve written about him before, but we (mostly Emily) had sensed that our season of grief and freedom was coming to an end.

So we began going to adoption events, and it was at one event that I was (lovingly?) scratched by a female orange cat who had had enough of me. Normally my mild allergies would result in some itchiness, maybe a raised scratch. But it wasn’t until the rash had spilled across my canvas that it began to collect around the wound, like some overlooked burn mark that began a great forest fire.

A week later, amidst a slow march of red, we nonetheless threw caution to the wind as we found ourselves visiting a litter of kittens that needed a home. Rashed, covered head-to-toe despite heat wave temperatures, and consumed by a deep reticence provided by my body’s revenge — all of my reluctance melted away as a five week old kitten purred its way into my arms. Three hours later my office became a new home for two brothers.

They are tiny and full of energy, matched only by their need to sleep, eat, and climb up my legs.

Suddenly the rash didn’t really matter. I slopped sweatpants and shirts over my ointment-membrane layer as so much other stuff melted away. I turned the corner into some new era. There are words for it. “Cat dad” fits the bill but doesn’t do it justice. The responsibility of such early life feels so… Daunting? Consequential? Overwrought?

Here at the end, the existential inquiry into the value of words has finally returned some kind of answer. Because when the kittens cry out and I try to meow back at them, their voices are so small that I cannot modulate or squish or squeak my adult human vocal cords into such a word or sound. It feels impossible and so they feel like a miracle.

The seemingly precarious nature of their tiny existence is matched only by my desire to see what happens next. The plot is simple and the stakes are high. The story of what will happen when they see the rest of our home, when they see the rest of the world, the rest of what life has planned for them; it is a boundless excitement illuminating the mundane. The cycle of eat, sleep, poop, and play feels revolutionary and then two days later my exclamations seem a little maudlin.

But if life is a story, and even if I have written some difficult chapters, I can’t help but whisper, knowing they do not understand me as I say, “wait until you see what happens next.”

This inability to communicate crosses a great divide. Life and its many strange detours collapse into the present. Today and tomorrow will come and go with a new constant. New life, the wide eyes of something young and pure and unknowing of all that will come or not is worth the effort of summoning words. Any words. Noises as words.

They are just cats. They are not human children. But they are feline children and they are ours.

And so the lives of Ernie and Cosmo offer a new desire to know less. Faced with accounting for the average lifespan of a cat, I plot a course for my new responsibilities. Twelve to eighteen years, a time span that undersells its definition: a lifetime. Big words. And a stretch of time too hard to plot or plan or pre-define into any such eras. Though it’s tempting to try, why not be surprised?

Biology tells me that I am likely late to the era of parenthood, but my biology has also drawn a wild card that has reshuffled the deck. Nonetheless, fate and kitten season has now dealt me living things to fret and protect and wonder and write about.

I always try to count time preciously, even though my practice may be haphazard. In cancer, I have counted in three year increments, currently finding myself on a grateful streak and always hoping for so much more. Under the weight of decision and wondering what phase or season or era of life I have blindly stepped into— I am suddenly torn between wanting to know more, more, more and also so much less.

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Sensory Activation: Things I Was Into This [Long Period of Time]

I have been busy but I have still been a diligent consumer of our 21st century media. Three recs, in print, film, and music. Interestingly, in a lengthy post about words, the latter two recommendations are largely devoid of them.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

I picked this up off of a NYT Books recommendation and really enjoyed its darkly comic but ultimately hopeful view of finding meaning in life. Stringing together a personal story of loss and an uncertain belief in his religion, Akbar relates the concept of martyrdom to his writing pursuits, relationships, art, and family.

Perfect Days, (Wim Wenders, 2023)

(streaming on Hulu)

A beautiful meditation on life that follows a man whose job it is to clean toilets around Tokyo. Much like life itself, it’s best not to rush the film or ask things to happen. It has made its way into my head just about every day since watching.

“Aqua”, Ryuichi Sakamoto

This recording is taken from Sakamoto’s final album. Before dying from his own cancer, Sakamoto recorded piano-only arrangements from his entire oeuvre. I thought it kind of silly, but the adoption agency recommended classical music to help get the kittens into sleep time. But now this album, and this song in particular, has become our nap time lullaby. The beautiful end of a great artist and the beginning of two little lives. What a life.

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