Thierry Sagnier's Blog, page 2

Revolution?

The last time a news item turned my stomach was when Notre Dame in Paris caught on fire. Monday, it was reading that SCOTUS had opted for the coward’s way out and granted POTUS immunity. My stomach churned. I thought I might throw up. I swallowed several times, persuaded myself I had misread the Associated Press headline, then reread and got nauseous again.

The conservative justices announced their decisions and then scampered home, leaving lower courts to clarify what might or might not be an official presidential act. Whatever a lower court decides will most certainly be kicked back up to SCOTUS, more than likely after the elections in November.

But what if the current president decided that Trump was as dangerous to the nation as any invasion force, and what if (pursuing this line of reasoning), acting on this latest SCOTUS decision, Biden—now immune—persuaded the Justice Department to declare his opponent persona non grata and forbid him from running.

And couldn’t Biden accuse Trump of espionage for hoarding classified material? How did Trump plan to use these documents? Toilet paper? Giftwrap?

Hmmm. Would there be a revolution if the present POTUS acted as Trump says he will if elected, using the President’s powers to wreak revenge on those who opposed his candidacy? There has been talk of guillotine, death sentences and firing squads…

Probably not. Revolutions are fostered by dissatisfied and desperate people who are mired in hopelessness and hunger which, judging from the photos I have seen of grossly obese militia men, is certainly not the case here. A few hundred, or even a few thousand, might be willing to lay their lives down for Trump and his captive Republicans, but dollars to doughnuts, most will repair to their Lazy Boy recliners and, armed with a Papa John’s meat lover pizza and a case of Miller Light, watch the uprising on their 60” Sony TV. We are not, despite our celluloid fantasies, a nation of Rambos.

When Notre Dame was aflame, Trump suggested dumping hundred of thousands of gallons of water on the century-old edifice. What SCOTUS has done is exactly that on the Constitution. The French pompiers—the firefighters—knew such an action would destroy the building. SCOTUS did it. It will destroy the Constitution.

An acquaintance proposed the following Biden/Trump comparison. Suppose you’re in the market for a used car. You go to a nearby lot and are greeted by an aging salesman who shows you a bunch of vehicles. He knows the inventory well, though on a couple of instances he mistakes a Ford for a Chevy. He describes the vehicles in detail, lists their shortcomings, answers all your questions and suggests you take your time and decide. He’ll be in the showroom if you need him.

You go to another used car dealership and are approached by a man with a fake tan, a dyed comb-over and very white teeth, which he displays in a wide feral smile. He is an award-winning salesman, he tells you, the best in the area! Did he say area? He meant the best in the country! He too knows his inventory and tries to sell you a battered truck that he claims is in perfect condition. In fact, he tells you, he has exactly the same model and loves it. The driver-side door doesn’t close too well; you really have to slam it. The tires are bald but he insists there’s plenty of tread left. The truck doesn’t start but he’ll give you a new battery if you buy it. You thank him and head back to your car. He follows; his voice getting louder and as you drive away, you see him in the rearview mirror. He’s giving you the finger.

Watcha gonna do?

Hospitalized

I’m ailing. It’s inconvenient; there are still books to read and write, discussions to hear, music and tunes to compose and sing. Of course, you’ll say, everyone is ailing and dying all the time. In fact, it’s believed 109 billion people have died since the dawn of human history, so one more or one less is not of great import. Except, of course, to the person who is ailing.
Last week I spent three days and two nights at the hospital. Blood tests showed my CO2 level was dangerously low. I did not even know CO2 was a factor in one’s health, but apparently it is, and I was shuffled off first to Inova Fairfax, and later to Northern Virginia Hospital Center to be monitored and fed industrial grade meatloaf and instant mashed potatoes. My blood was drawn 27 times, leaving dark blue bruises on my left wrist and both arms. Other ministrations included several shots to avoid blood clots, and a cocktail of vitamins.
During the three days, I was attended to by a plethora of nurses, mostly female, who worked 12-hour shifts and were all pleasant and helpful. None were born in the U.S., but all had been trained here. A few’s command of English was at best fundamental and made murkier by the masks they wore, but each and everyone strived to make my stay easier.
Not so much for the doctors. I clocked the overall time they spent with me and came up with a total of 23 minutes over three days. One was downright unpleasant, shrugging her shoulders as she left my room after failing to explain lucidly why I was there in the first place.
Eventually I would learn that, according to the National Institute of Health Medical Library, “In the human body, carbon dioxide is formed intracellularly as a byproduct of metabolism. CO2 is transported in the bloodstream to the lungs where it is ultimately removed from the body through exhalation. CO2 plays various roles in the human body including regulation of blood pH, respiratory drive, and affinity of hemoglobin for oxygen (O2). Fluctuations in CO2 levels can cause disturbances in the human body if normal levels are not maintained.”
Also, changes in the CO2 level may suggest that one is either losing or retaining acidic fluid. This may cause an imbalance in the body's electrolytes. CO2 levels in the blood are affected by kidney and lung function, where the kidneys help maintain the normal bicarbonate levels.
I was put on a CO2 IV for 24 hours, and once my CO2 level was deemed safe, switched to bicarbonate of soda pills. Baking soda, in simpler terms. The odd thing about this little adventure is that at no time did I feel ill.
I have, in the past couple of years, become deconditioned, but I thought this was due to a loss of daily exercise. I moved from a house with a yard and all the demands such a domicile makes, to a one-bedroom apartment. I no longer climb stairs, mow the lawn, or perform the daily tasks that come with home ownership. I have become, in a word, lazy, and I am too lazy to handle my laziness.
Coming home from the hospital was odd. For three days, nurses, assistants, phlebotomists and helpers provided a steady stream of company. I live alone and can—and often do—spend days without seeing or talking to anyone. Back in my apartment, I suddenly felt overwhelmed by loneliness. The feeling lasted through the night.
Back in familiar surroundings, I once again follow established routines. East, sleep, see doctors, read. It’s been months since my last blog, and I am trying to rekindle an interest in writing. I battle the feeling of “what’s the point” and am at best only moderately successful. I’ve started leafing through the small notebook where I jot down ideas and one or two notions have elicited some interest. Perhaps baking soda is a cure.

La Famille, Part Five

My Oncle Jacques was not a nice person. He was tall and slim, with the slicked-back hair popular among American movie stars, and he wore thick, black-framed glasses that he hoped made him look like an intellectual, which he was not. What he was, as his father—my paternal grandfather—liked to remind everyone, was a gifted concert pianist who, for two decades, was the toast of France and, for reasons unknown, Rio de Janeiro.
It’s difficult for me to offer an honest opinion of him. He mistreated his younger sister—my mother—and often behaved like a lout, with the approval and support of his father.
Shortly after the demise of Le Petomane, the flatulist Joseph Pujol, practical jokes were the height of entertainment. Pujol’s strange ability to fart songs and extinguish candles at a distance had made farting all the rage. Oncle Jacques and his father’s favorite trick was to sit on either side of a woman dinner guest. My grandfather would surreptitiously tug the woman’s dinner napkin off her lap and onto the floor, and discreetly point to the cloth. The woman would lean to one side to retrieve the napkin, and my uncle would slip a whoopee cushion onto her chair. As she straightened up, the cushion would emit a dreadfully loud farting sound and silence the table. My grandfather, always the gentleman, would pat the prank victim on the arm and say, “Please, Madame, it could happen to anyone.”
All in good fun.
Another flatulent pastime was conducting a telephone conversation while in the toilette, breaking wind and flushing every time the party on the other end of the call began to speak. Oncle Jacques did this with elan and enjoyed the embarrassment it caused among female acquaintances.
He was also a storyteller. In his keyboard repertoire was the very complex and demanding Left Hand Concerto by Ravel. Oncle Jacques would whisper to fans that the composer had written the piece to develop Jacques’ left hand, which was weaker than his right one. This was untrue. Ravel’s work was created for a military pilot who had lost his hand fighting the airborne enemy during World War 1. Jacque’s lie was never challenged and enhanced his already significant reputation.
For all his shortcomings, Jacque’s talent lives on. Most of Poulenc and Ravel’s recorded works exist thanks to Jacques’ LPs and CDs available in record stores and online. He was an Oscar Wilde character, living for weeks and months in an admirer’s chateau where he would entertain guests and in turn be offered hospitality, meals, trips, and clothing. He was one of Jean Cocteau’s horizontal friends and I have an old photo of him with Coco Chanel, Igor Stravinsky and other luminaries of the time.
Members of the family did not get along. Jacques, in particular, considered himself a leading light, and was often at odds with uncles, aunts and cousins. He particularly disliked my Tante Thérése, a member of the Bertrand clan, who had married very young and, before being widowed, had lived an adventurous life in the French colonies. Their enmity grew as the years passed, and eventually they refused to be in the same room together.
Tante Thérése died in the late 50s and was ensconced in the Bertrand/Fevrier crypt at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. My uncle, I am told, was delighted. He died a few years later, struck down by a motorbike ridden by a drunk shoemaker. There was only one space left in the family’s crypt, and Oncle Jacques was laid there, next to Tante Therese for all eternity.

An Aside

I often think about death. I don’t talk about it too often because it’s considered inelegant, and it makes others squeamish. But birth and death are the two most important events in one’s life, and talking openly and seriously about the latter should be encouraged, rather than avoided.
I have reached and surpassed my past due date, which for males in the U.S. is 73.5 years. Life expectancy for U.S. men has fallen and it is now six years less than that of women.
At my age, I have lost both parents, one older sister, uncles, aunts and cousins, three best friends, one significant other, and a number of acquaintances, casual colleagues and comrades, teachers and students and neighbors.
I have enough health issues both significant and not to realize and accept that there’s not an infinity of time left. I am not a religious man, though I do believe there is some sort of higher force out there, and that it isn’t me. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, but I do allow that anything’s possible. I’ve often wondered why pain and discomfort are far more the norm than happiness and pleasure, and why this higher power has not made the business of creation less violent and more amicable. I believe that Tennyson nailed it: Nature (is) red of tooth and claw. But I wonder why…
I remember reading years ago that the body doesn’t remember pain. I’m not sure whether this is a quote or urban knowledge, and it doesn’t really matter—it’s true. Would we be as willingly violent if we remembered ever scrape and scratch? Would women be willing to have a second child if they could remember the almost unbearable pain associated with the first? And why pain? Why hasn’t nature allowed birth to be a pleasant experience? Why are violence and creation cousins so inextricably linked? There’s something of a bait-and-switch here. Sex is pleasant, hopefully for both parties involved, but the end result of sex, its culmination—birth—is painful and, until recently, often fatal to the child bearer. This makes no sense. The Zulus knew this and understood that when a woman gives birth, it’s the man who lies down.
What I find interesting about death and illness is the embarrassment that surrounds them. When asked how we are by friends, we do not respond with a litany of ills. We say we’re good, fine, thank you, and we turn the question back to the querier, “And how are YOU?”
My answer to the inevitable is, “I’m peachy!” If that doesn’t lead to a change of subject, I’ll go with peachy KEEN! That seldom fails.
I have had the dubious distinctions of seeing both my mother and father shortly after they died. My mom was in a room in the American Hospital in Paris which, strangely enough, is where she gave birth to me. Lifeless, she seemed so small, it was difficult to associate her slight body with the sheer dimensions of her personality. My dad died in the U.S. following a fall from a window. He too was small in death, and neither wore a revealing expression. They were not serene, or happy, or sad. They’d become empty vessels whose usefulness was past.
I know both suffered, and death must have been a welcome escape. I’m grateful for that, but unlikely to ever understand why pain was necessary.

La Famille Part 4

I know so little of my father’s history that I’m almost embarrassed. Of course, he wasn’t the most garrulous man, and whatever prompted him to leave his London-based Franco-English family when he was still young will remain a mystery. One event in particular stayed with me for decades and is unlikely to ever be solved.
I was 17 years old, returning from a party. The front door to our house was open. My mother was at the top of the stairs, my father at the bottom. Both were yelling. They fell silent when they saw me. My mother turned, went into their bedroom, and slammed the door. I was standing five feet from my father when he turned away, shaking his head. “I never should have left my first wife,” he said.
The incident was never mentioned until decades later, when he was in the hospital after a violent encounter with a tenant in the Alzheimer’s-friendly building where they both lived. My father didn’t remember what had happened and could not understand why he was hospitalized and strapped to his bed like an animal. I explained and he muttered, “C’est absurde. Ridicule…“ Then I asked, “Papa, tu étais marié avant Maman?” I saw something in his eyes, which vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Qui t’a dit ça?”
“You did. You and Maman were arguing, and you said you’d been married before…”
I unbuckled the straps at his wrists and ankles. He sat up painfully and tried to stand. I pushed him back gently. He sat on the edge of the bed. “There was no one before your mother. Or after.”
I insisted. “But you said…”
“No. I didn’t.” He yawned. “Je suis fatigué.”
He lay back down on the bed and yawned again. He closed his eyes.
At that moment, a doctor came in. She was a slight woman, with a pronounced Balkan accent. “Ah,” she said. “You are the son? He said you would come.”
We spoke for a few minutes about my father’s condition. “You can take him home tomorrow,” she said. “He’ll be much better off with you than here.”
I wanted to ask the doctor if he had mentioned a first wife, then thought better of it. If he hadn’t spoken about it for almost half a century, I had no right to question his secret.
Maman’s family was different, openly outrageous as it clung to a vestige of upper middle-class values. My great uncle Jules, my maternal grandfather’s brother, was an architect of some notoriety. He had designed various buildings in Paris, and his chef d’oeuvre was a large rectangular structure that was the headquarters of the Banque de France.
Jules and his wife—I believe her name was Sidonne—did not like each other, and as the years passed by, the dislike turned to a vociferous loathing often voiced during family gatherings. Sidonne, it appears, was not highly regarded. The Février/Bertrand clan thought Jules had married far below his station, and the union’s sole saving—and unspoken—grace was Sidone’s wealth. An only child, she had inherited a copious amount of Francs shortly after wedding Jules, and kept the purse-strings tightly knotted.
Jules devised an elegant retribution. When the Banque de France building was inaugurated, he led guests to the roof and pointed out the gargoyles sculpted by Italian artisans. There was an even dozen, distributed so that their gaping mouths spewed forth gushes of water off the roof every time it rained. There, among the horrific griffin, wyvern, and chimera, was a gargoyle sculpted as a monstrous woman’s face, a medusa with a gaping maw, a perfect if exaggerated rendition of his wife Sidonne’s head.
When Sidonne died not much later, Jules inherited her money, a tidy sum that enabled him to start keeping company with an 18-year-old chorus line dancer from the Folies Bergères. Enamored, he bought her a small candy store, as she had a sweet tooth. The girl—I was told all this by my mother—was an average dancer and could barely count to ten. While Jules was visiting Poland, she sold the bonbonière and fled Paris with a stagehand. Neither were ever seen again.

If you enjoy these blogs, be sure to read my novel, L’Amérique, available from Apprentice Press and Amazon.

La Famille, Part 3

The building in Paris where I was raised was erected in the late 1890s with all the modern appurtenances. There was running water, an elevator, flushing toilets, and even electricity, which had been introduced to the capital in 1870. It was built like an L lying on its side, with a central courtyard and a porte cochère, an entrance wide enough to accept horse-drawn carriages. There were five floors, the topmost featuring a balcony. It was a good, but not great, address. The 17th arrondissement was close to the Parc Monceau and its Metro stop, and the surrounding streets were lined with brasseries, cafés and bistros.

Of the five floors, three were peopled by the Bertrand/Février/Sagnier clan. On the rez-de-chaussée, on either side of the porte cochère lived my great Oncle Répaud, a roundish man, hero of the first world war during which he was wounded. Répaud had a three-legged dog, Soldat, who had a perpetual sub-sonic growl which did not make him popular among the tenants. Répaud walked the beast several times a day. I did not like the dog and it did not like me. I suspect Oncle Répaud did not like him much either. Soldat was neither friendly nor attractive but his infirmity made him the perfect companion for a wounded hero, and so both the three-legged animal and its hobbling companion tolerated each other.

Thursday afternoons, I made it a point to accompany them on their walk around the block, School was let out early, and the new Tintin magazine was delivered to the news kiosks. Répaud and the kiosk owner were Thursday afternoon friends. They gossiped, spoke of the war, shook their heads sadly at the state of the country’s armed forces, lamented their ages and tearfully recalled each other’s heroism.

Répaud bought three newspapers and two magazines from the kiosk owner, who slipped Spirou and Tintin between France Soir and Le Figaro, “pour le petit,” which was me.

After the kiosk was la bonbonière, the candy store where my uncle purchased two single pieces of rum-filled chocolate for me, and a small box of chocolate-covered nougat for his former wife, Tante Jacqueline, who lived in our building on the rez-de-chaussé. Though divorced Oncle Répaud and Tante Jacqueline remained more than fond of each other. He gave her small gifts and a monthly stipend allowing her to live quite comfortably. She looked after him, did his laundry, darned his socks, and twice a week prepared his lunch—a cut of horsemeat for which he’d developed a taste during the war—Brussel sprouts, a beet salad, and a generous slice of Port Salut cheese which he spread on a baguette already slathered with butter.

I liked Tante Jacqueline. She was tall, pale and thin, her white hair almost always covered by a hat and veil. My mother said this aunt had been a great beauty, courted by many but won by my uncle’s dashing presence. Her apartment, to which I was invited two or three times a year, was a museum of oil paintings, some of which she had purchased from my mother, century-old newspapers and photo albums, and a large chandelier missing many crystals. She was not above reprimanding me softly if my shoes were unlaced, or my shirt untucked. She taught me three ways of knotting a tie, which, in these days of man buns and clip-ons, I can still do with my eyes closed.

If you enjoy these blogs, be sure to read my novel, L’Amérique, available from Apprentice Press and Amazon.

La Vie, Part Deux

There were no other children in the apartment building where we lived in Paris. It strikes me as peculiar that I never noticed this as a child. This odd fact was lost upon me as an adult. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t lack playmates.
My mother’s dress-making shop occupied two rooms in the apartment. She was a talented seamstress with Coco Chanel ambitions, and she had a small staff of models and designers who worked for her part-time. Fittings were on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. I would sit on the floor as her young models, often half-naked, tried on various apparels. I do remember that the models found my presence amusing and went out of their way to display breasts and butts. I didn’t know why this thrilled me, but it did.
My half-sisters, Isabelle and Florence, came to visit once a week but were a lot older than I and so uninterested in entertaining me. My mother had clients with children, and these women occasionally came for a fitting. My favorite playmate was Babette, the daughter of a couple with a de in their name, a sure sign of lost nobility. Babette, eight-years-old knew everything about everything. We would be on the floor and she’d point to a model. “Celle la,” she would nod, “her breasts are ridiculous. See how they hang?” She would sniff in disdain. “Papa would like her. Maman always says Papa likes cows.” Few things escaped her notice. “Et l’autre,” she’d nod in the direction of the other model, “she has a bottom like the back of a Renault. And huge feet! Why does your mother hire these women? When I’m older, I’ll be a model like Dovima or Suzy Parker. I’ll be famous and beautiful.”
The other person with whom I spent a lot of time was Louise, a stout woman from Quimper, in Bretagne. Louise could neither read nor write. She was one of the tens of thousands war widows left homeless when the hostilities ended. I don’t know how Louise got to Paris, or where my mother met her, but my parents did what countless families did: they took her in, in exchange for babysitting, cooking, cleaning and, on rare occasions, serving dinner to guests.
I remember that on Sundays, her day off, Louise would don the traditional Bretonne garb—a billowy black skirt since she was a widow, a starched white apron, wooden clogs which she wore with American-made socks, and a coiffe, an elaborate headdress made of lace and ribbons. Louise’s coiffe took a half-an-hour to arrange. She would then meet other women from her region, all wearing coiffes from their villages.
On occasion and with my mother’s permission, Louise would show me off to her friends. Outfitted in dark blue short-pantsed suit, I would follow Louise from one Breton bistro to another. In each, I would be given a thimbleful of home-made fruit liqueur so that by the end of the afternoon, I was as drunk as a small child could get. Louise called me her petit homme, her little man, and was inordinately proud that I never threw up. I was, she said, un vrai Breton.

Family

I never knew my family well. I do not know, for example, why my father left England, never to reunite with his family. I did not know I had paternal uncles, one of whom died in the blitzkrieg of London, or that an aunt, my brother’s sister, fell to alcoholism.
I barely knew my grandparents, paternal or maternal. The latter, Henri, was a shadowy old man who lived two floors above us in the building on the Rue de la Terrasse in Paris. We saw him twice a year, at Easter and Christmas when he hosted a sparse lunch eaten mostly in silence. His wife, my mother’s mother, had died of an embolism and soon after the death, he had remarried a sickly woman who seldom left her bed.
Henri wrote operas, one of which—Mona Vanna—had a modicum of success as it was co-authored by the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. Henri traveled to America and saw his work performed in New York and Chicago. I don’t know what he actually did for a living, as one would hardly survive on the earnings of a single work.
Henri, his second wife, and my mother’s brother, my Oncle Jacques, lived on the fifth floor. Jacques was a well-known concert pianist who played Ravel and Poulenc, both friends of the family. He was also an unkind egotist who called me an idiot when I was five years old and had failed to properly tie my shoes. To this day, you’ll find CDs of his interpretations of both composers’ works in record stores. He died in the mid-60s, struck down by a moped as he crossed a street in St. Malo. I inherited a silk scarf and a gold money clip from him. Both have vanished.
My father’s father came to see us in Paris only once. He was a small, wizened man dressed all in black, and though I knew I was his grandson, I could never fully establish in my mind that my father and he were related. I don’t remember if he spoke French or not, and I can’t recall hearing a single conversation between he and my parents during his visit.
My mother, Marité, left her home at an early age and associated with the Parisian artists of the time. She studied under the French painter George Braque, met a Jewish Algerian doctor, Marcel, and married him, not a popular move for the daughter of a Frnch upper middle-class family. They had two daughters, Isabelle and Florence, my half-sisters whom I loved and admired but saw too seldom.
When the Germans marched into Paris, Marcel, Marité and the two girls fled the city and went to Algiers, where Marcel’s family lived. The marriage foundered, and Marité joined the Free French and drove trucks. At the end of the war, she met my father in Marseille where they were demobilized. He followed her back to Paris.
There was a long and painful trial to establish custody of the girls, and my mother lost. I remember tears, arguments, and, eventually, the decision to move to America where my father would find work with the Voice of America and the family could begin anew.
Both Isa and Florence visited, but the relationship between Florence and my mother had suffered fatal wounds when Flo had opted to stay with her father. Mother and daughter never fully mended the fences and though I do believe in their efforts to make things right, both were strong unforgiving women with indomitable wills. Florence died more than a decade ago.
There are Sagniers in London, and I’ve been told that the actress Ludivine Sagnier is a first cousin, but I have never met her and probably never will. I have nephews and grandnephews whom I saw at Flo’s funeral. They are successful in both the arts and French politics.
I scattered my parents’ ashes in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, reputed to be the most visited necropolis in the world. There is a family crypt there that I discovered by accident. It is filled to capacity with a half-dozen maternal ancestors that are entombed within, including mean Oncle Jacques. May they all rest in peace.

A Christmas Quandary

You are at a Christmas dinner party and the meal will be served in a half-hour or so. The guests are friendly people whom you see once or twice a year; you know their names and marital status, but little else. The conversation is safe—the weather, because yes, it has been unseasonably warm for this time of year. The couple that just returned from Bangkok adds that it was very warm there too.
Conversation falters when the hostess enters the room bearing a large plate of giant shrimp, monstrous crustaceans, really, almost a meal onto themselves. The guest on your right takes one, dips it into the cocktail sauce, and pops the entire animal into his mouth. He chews contemplatively and his wife takes a shrimp too. You reach for one yourself. These are shelled shrimp save for their tails, and ever since you were a child, you have been perfecting the art of taking a shrimp, holding it daintily between thumb and forefinger, and extracting every gram of flesh from the tail.
Having consumed one, the immediate question is how long must you wait before taking another? There are eight of you, and you have surreptitiously counted the shrimp. There were 14, now only 11 remain.
But suddenly, the guest on your left takes two shrimps and in the blink of an eye, pops them both in his mouth sans cocktail sauce, and swallows them whole almost without chewing. You know this because his Adam’s apple bobbed only once. You and the neighbor on your right exchange covert glances. There is a shrimp hog amongst you, and the crustacean cocktail rule that reigned a moment ago has been superseded.
You wait. There’s a strong possibility that one or more guests are allergic to shrimp. That, indeed, is the case. The impossibly thin husband and wife sharing an easy chair look at the platter’s offerings, shake their heads and smile ruefully. One shrimp in a moment of weakness would send them both to the hospital.
You decide it’s now or never and in a moment of selflessness take the smallest remaining shrimp. The hostess and her husband take one each and you wonder if perhaps they’ve already had a shrimp or two before serving the guests. Do the party hosts get special dispensation and if so, is it fair?
Your neighbor to the right rolls his eyes and leans forward to spear another offering. He glances at you and notes your disapproving look, sighs and demonstrates his good manners by disallowing himself the treat which, good manners be damned, really should be his. Both couples who have yet to partake do so.
Only two giant shrimp are left and just as you figure you too will become a shrimp hog because really, you hardly know these people, the hostess takes a shrimp and returns the almost empty platter to the kitchen. You rise from the sofa to help clear the napkins and shrimp tails, deciding you will have the last one as soon as the hostess turns her back. At that very moment, she picks up the sole surviving marine treat and gives it to the family dog, who wolfs it down without chewing. Your breath catches in your throat. The dog gives you a knowing look.
You spend the better part of the meal doing the math dealing with the dog, the guests and the shrimp. At the end of the superb repast, a sliver of the excellent desert remains. You and the shrimp hog exchange glances.

Origina

I have been writing Epiphanettes since September 2010. I can’t remember why I started writing, other than writing is what I do. The word Epiphanettes was picked from a collection of epiphany-related terms I invented. An epiphanette is a small epiphany. An epiphanot is when you realize an epiphany isn’t. An epiphanut is a deranged person’s epiphany, and an epiphanot-so-much is an epiphany that misses the mark or doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. There are other epipha-related yet-to-be-created words, I’m sure, and I’ll let other writers explore these.
I’ve tried to keep most blogs to about 300-400 words, because if you can’t say it succinctly, it may not merit being said at all. The fact that in my opinion, most people have ADD and can’t read more than 500 words in one sitting was a contributing factor influencing my brevity. I have various blog sites, and all told I think I may have about 1,000-or-so readers. Some of them like to comment on whatever I’ve written about, but most don’t. I generally don’t write about very heavy stuff like politics and politicians, global warming, war, or natural disasters. Other writers are far better versed in those subjects than I am.
I have written extensively about cancer because I have cancer, and documenting the path of my disease has proven helpful in accepting it. I have been operated upon 39 times in a dozen years to remove tumors that are almost always malignant. I’ve gone through round after round of chemotherapy, as well as six months of immunotherapy. The latter is administered through an IV. Chemo is more direct. What is essentially a poisonous solution is injected into my bladder via my urethra. Both treatments have side-effects. Chemo makes me sick; immunotherapy has caused something incurable called peripheral neuropathy, a loss of feelings in my feet and hands. Neither treatment is fun at all. At this point, my doctors tell me there are two options left: removal of the offending bladder or radiation. As choices go, this is not ideal, and I am slowly coming to the realization that perhaps the treatments are worse than the illness and that it is time to stop looking for a silver bullet.
I’ve written about family perhaps because I don’t really have one. I’m single and my parents died decades ago. I have a half-sister who lives in Paris. She is a composer of operas for children, a big fish in a small pond and I adore her. We talk every month or so. My other half-sister died in France a while back. Bladder cancer killed her, and it is perhaps a coincidence that I am dealing with this type of cancer myself.
I love writing and have had a bunch of books published. One was even nominated for a Pulitzer but I am not allowed to profit from this small honor since I didn’t win.
I also write and play music. For a few years I was part of a band that gigged locally and released a CD, Say Goodnight which I think is pretty damned good. Since the band’s demise, I have been incredibly lucky to benefit from the talents and wisdom of two long-term musical friends, Rich and Mike, Rich, a vocalist and keyboard player, is deeply involved in an organization called Cancer Can Rock, which records musicians and songwriters with cancer for posterity. Mike and I formed a duo, Cash & Carry, which also records. Mike is an accomplished bassist and guitarist, as well as the more than proficient recording engineer/arranger of our songs.
There’s more, but I’m beginning to lose interest in the subject. I’m sure this is temporary. Who doesn’t like writing about themselves? There will be another Epiphanettes soon.