Foto: A Noi Si Schiude il Ciel--TarquiniaDear Kiddypusses,
° How to unplug Giac?
° You just put your two lips together, and blow.
° No, that’s kissing, no, whistling, well, anyway, something Lauren Bacall knew well how to do.
° You unplug Giac by--
° --well I don’t know that either. I always thought feeding tubes were rubber hoses inserted down the throats of Irish prisoners on hunger strike. A funnel was placed on the outside end, British gruel was poured down, and after the rubber had galled the throatlining a few times, the patient was invariably healed. Of his political protest.
° And even this last Spring, the nonNazi Bishop of Rome had a “feeding tube” inserted through his nose. Slick vinyl, lubricated I suppose, nonchafing--still grosser than all getout.
° But when I saw a diagram of the modern, surgical, Schiavo version of a feeding tube, I like to’ve fainted.
° So as to the howto of unplugging, y’all’ll just have to consult Google.
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° The whento of unplugging is way easier, Giac doesn’t even need the advice and consent and shamelessly selfaggrandising authoritarianism of the U. S. Congress to know the timing.
° Neither do y’all.
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° Just before folks are strapped to ventilators or punctured by feedingtubes or plugged into some other extraordinarilyoffensivetoDeathMostHoly contraption, they are most generally in one of two states.
° Either they are a going proposition, able to selffeed, selfclothe, selfexcrete, selfclean, ecc. ecc. (even if they’re slow as molasses at Christmas)--
° --or else they are a wellnigh collapsed corporation already, unable to selffeed, selfclothe, selfexcrete, selfclean, ecc. ecc. Nor is the almost entire lack of a mind--not that any of us is all that bright to start with--to be ignored. It’s all a natural part of that living rotting process known as aging. It‘s a towering rottentothecore maple tree waiting for the next windstorm..
° If one--before the car accident, for example--was a going proposition, it is possible one may become so again.
° If one--before the stroke, for example--was already a terminally collapsing bankruptcy, the jig is already up, whether one likes it or not.
° Unplugging dilemmas arise from HopeSpringsEternal, from MedicalMagickalThinking, from TheosophicalButtinitism terrified by Death Most Holy in person.
° “Giac may recover, I’ve seen bigger miracles.”
° If the doctor says that, it’s time to pull the plug.
° “Many patients in Giac’s condition come around, with minimal brain damage, bimeby.”
° If the doctor says that, it’s time to mark off six weeks on the calendar, then pull the plug if Giac doesn’t tell you otherwise from his own lips.
° “Giac’ll never have any mind again (semiparalysed, incontinent, helpless and absent), but with ((y’all’s)) tender care and patience he can look forward to many years of ‘quality life.’”
° If the doctor says that, pull the plug, then sue the quack for violating the Geneva Accords regulating human torture.
° Yet y’all see the problem: no living will can foresee the exact degree of debility encountered, the exact point at which yes shades into no.
° Although, apparently, Congress thinks folks believe it can.
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° Keep in mind two principles.
° 1. Division of Labour.
° 2. Provision of Banana.
° Provision of Banana.
° See to it that there is a banana (I prefer them on the slightly green side, no squishy brown rotters stinking of nail polish remover, please) beside Giac’s bed at all times. If one of yez proves to be a tenderhearted, nambypamby, sweetiepie girlyboy of a man, peel the banana. If even that doesn’t keep Pansyass from calling, in a shrill Senatorial schoolgirl tone of voice, the rest of you “Murderers,” then break off bits of banana, mash with molasses, and apply to my lips.
° Even a sulling Cat will choose Life under those conditions. If said Sullen Cat is still capable of Life.
° As for the sheets, don’t trouble yourselves. Think of Nanook of the North, where the Inuit mothers, to conserve moisture and nutrients, licked their infants’ little beehinds clean.
° Think about Nanook, then do the exact opposite. Rubber sheets, perfumed cat litter.
° Not y’all’s mess, mine mine mine. ° Division of Labour.
° Piers will be off somewhere occupying himself with la Guadalupe and the deathchants.
° Coz will be bedside to invoke Death Most Holy, and he well knows what that means.
° While my affectionate little Lad, legalistically disabled from obtaining a merciful and humane ampule of morphine at the local pharmacy, will paint the backside of my tonsils with the juice of the same mushrooms Agrippina used on Claudius--though hellebore or jimsonweed would do as well in season.
° Testamentarily, Giac.
° O terra, addio, addio valle di pianti, Sogno di--what’s that caterwauling out in the hall interrupting the angelic voices in what’s left of Giac’s mind, why it’s, why it’s--
° --why it’s our beloved Piers and our belovable Leggero quarrelling over the funeral music.
° “I’m sure I don’t need you to tell me what to play for the funeral, I know what Giac wanted. Howells. Duruflé. Improv sortie on Michael.”
° “Yet, strangely, I don’t need anybody to tell me what Giac wanted, dead or alive. Besides, he wrote it down in plain English: Falenyam Diaz’s transcription of Gianni Schicchi for harmonica trio and bagpipe chorus.”
° “O screw!”
° “No fooling.” ° Then behold the clouds part, the beckoning tunnel of white Swan Lake happyending light, “I’m coming Elizabeth,” Te Deum laudamus alla Floria Tosca Alighieri, the fragrance of rotted tuna fish--uh oh, the Cat‘s sucking my breath again!
° Sogno di gaudio che in dolor svanì.
