The last six months have been a challenge, even if I dare to say it, an uphill battle, but I loved every second of it. In my 71-years, I have never felt such a life-changing prospect of staying alive, and all due to chance. Cancer is serious, but why can’t I have cancer with a smile? All of it is coming to its peak: the illness, the chemotherapy, the books I read, the films I have seen, and my writing. All of it is on another level of greatness.

It was a month ago that I left Kaiser Chemotherapy treatments, for what we hope is the last time. I’m not sure how much more I can do to deal with the awesome powers of the Chemo cocktail. I cannot complain, because all I had to do was lie there as they dripped the poison, but I had very few after-effects of the drug. The worst is the numbness in my feet, toes, and fingers, but I can still type and kind of walk with the assistance of a cane or a walker. I have been told that this numbness may never leave, or at best, will fade out within a few months. We will see.

Right now, the important aspect is to gain strength in the body and brain and keep going forward. The fear of falling down is there, but I have a series of exercises to fight the lack of balance in my body. I have improved, but it’s a slow process; my slowness can be your speed.

I will keep writing for my Substack audience, but I’m also turning my hospital writings into a book. One thing I want to be clear about is that this is not a Cancer survival book but a work of non-fiction. There is no one journey when it comes to illness. Each person has to go through that journey, which can be different than my trip into the dark park. I was told by my Kaiser vampires, the nurses, that what I went through, many of their patients can’t do it. The chemo sessions were too strong, but due to luck, or the master chemist, I can take the chemo with little outside problems. At times, I get impatient with the drip-drip and want to take the liquid in the bag and drink it down. I wonder what Chemo tastes like? When they change the bags, nurses wear protective clothing, including eyeglasses and masks.

The big difference now and then is I’m not attached to any machinery, or body-attached to a PICC, which is placed in one’s arm for the chemo and other liquid drugs. I had it for six months, and losing that, as well as the catheter, is paradise. One doesn’t know the blessed state until one loses the chains of the medical Hospital world.

This past week, I moved on up from using a walker to a cane. For me, this is like walking on the Moon. I almost look normal, except for the cane. I walk like a senior citizen, and every time I pass a mirror, I see one. It’s always a shock when I realize the image is me.

How is it possible that someone who heard and owns a copy of the first Ramones album somehow turned into an old man with a cane? How can this possibly happen?

My physical therapist taught me that while using a cane, I must think of it as a third leg. The cane goes first, then my weak right leg, and finally the stronger left leg. At times, I get the choreography wrong and start with the left before the right, but I always remember that the cane goes first.

A month ago, all of this would have been impossible. Around that time, I discovered I could get to the bathroom from our bed without a walker or cane. I called Lun*na into the bedroom without telling her why. Once she arrived, I pushed the walker aside and walked into the bathroom and back to the bed.

She cried. I like to entertain my wife. For an encore, I walked out into the hallway.

Walking without assistance wasn’t taught by the physical therapist. It’s something I do every morning as part of my exercise routine to strengthen my legs and improve my balance. Balance is still an issue. Standing straight, or with one foot behind the other for ten to thirty seconds, sounds easy enough, but for me, it remains a struggle not to fall.

I have goals: going up and down the 20 steps outside our home, taking a shower by myself, and putting on and removing my compression socks. The socks have been difficult for the past year—before, during, and after chemo. No matter what shape I’m in, they remain hard work.

I’m also curious when my hair will return. The top is thinning, which is new to me, and I haven’t had to shave in months. Before my first chemo session, I got a haircut and a shave. Since then, the hair on the top of my head and my beard have simply stopped growing.

My hairdresser visited me a month ago, looked at my hair, and asked who had cut it. I told her she was the last person to do so. Her haircut is still there. For how much longer, I have no idea.

The past six months have been a psychedelic trip that I never awakened from. So close to death, yet I keep getting pulled back into life.

These are the books I read during and after chemotherapy: Reading does save lives.

1. Thomas Mann by Herbert Lehnert

2. Blood Splatters Quickly: Selected Stories by Ed Wood, Jr.

3. David Bowie and The Search of Life, Death, and God by Peter Omerod

4. One No One and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello

5. The Telephone Booth Indian by A.J. Liebling

6. The Pigeon Tunnel by John Le Carré

7. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

8. The World of Yesterday by Stephan Zweig

9. The Big Con by David W. Mauer

10. A Murder of Quality by John Le Carré

11. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John Le Carré

12. Voices by Frederic Prokosch

13. Little Castles of Bohemia by Gérad de Nerval

14. Travel in the Americas by Albert Camus

15. The Looking Glass War by John Le Carré

16. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré

17. Transcription by Ben Lerner

18. Leaving The Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

19. The Ribbon At Olympia’s Throat by Michel Leiris

20. Making Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life by Mason Currey

21. The Topeka School by Ben Lerner

22. Scorpions by Yumiko Kurahashi

23. Drifting by Joris-Karl Huysmans

24. Return of the Maltese Falcon by Max Allan Collins

25. The Siren’s Lament: Essential Stories by Junichro Tanizaki

26. No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and The Women Who Shaped The Scene by Adele Bertei

27. 10:04 by Ben Lerner

28. Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans

29. Georges Braque & Others by Trevor Winkfield

30. Experience by Martin Amis

31. My Heart & I Agree by Lucy Sante

32. A Perfect Spy by John Le Carré

33. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

34. The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson

35. Justice With A Smile by Osamu Dazai

Over the last few days, I have seen much improvement in my strength and in my ability to stand up straight without falling to the floor. I have been learning new exercises, and within a short period of time, I have seen improvement. I also received a cane from Kaiser in the mail yesterday, and I have been using it in the living room, without my walker. Also, yesterday I could lift my feet and step into the bathtub, which means I will be able to shower on my own. All of this is happening in a quick session of time, mere hours.

It has been exactly two weeks since I was discharged from the hospital, weak as a kitten, or Superman in the presence of kryptonite. Within those two weeks, I’m able to walk from our bed to the bathroom without a walker, and every morning, I walk back and forth to the bathroom at least five times, as part of my daily exercise practice. I also have a step ladder that is one inch taller than my steps outside our home, and I practice lifting my feet up and down again, as if I were walking the entire 20 steps outside. Part of my legs still feel weak and may buckle, so I’m trying to strengthen from the ankles to the knees.

Thinking back, before I had chemo or even knowing I had cancer, I remember checking the mailbox on my staircase, and as I was going up the stairs, my right leg buckled a bit, but I managed to keep my balance. I never thought much about it at the time, but looking back, I wonder if it was an early sign that something was wrong. Also, when I sat down in the chair, I couldn’t raise my right leg to cross the other leg. It was an odd sensation not to do this simple crossing of my legs. It was soon afterward that I had a complete breakdown in my body, and ended up in the hospital last January this year.

Struggling for good health is an interesting battle. The only General or Boss one listens to is what your body tells you. No one told me to walk across the living room floor with a cane; I just did it naturally. It is like I’m growing out of my sick body into a much stronger version, a progression from bad to good; at least it is all going toward a good direction.

John Le Carré surprised me. I expected a well-written spy thriller, but I wasn’t expecting that Le Carré would be the Marcel Proust of spy literature. Even so, I think viewing his books as mere spy thrillers is wrong. He’s a man of great literature who happens to write in the landscape of Cold War espionage, but in truth, his work is more about the alienation of such a role, as well as issues of trust, betrayal, and loyalty.

A Perfect Spy is a masterpiece. One of the great works of English literature in the 20th century. The main character is Magnus Pym, a spy whose father was a con artist, and whose lies came out of him like sweat. In that sense, young Magnus was trained for an occupation where the truth is loose, and friendships are based on illusions, which on the surface feels perfectly reasonable to Pym.

Le Carré is very much a textural writer in that, in a sense, you can feel the air in the room, whether cold or hot. He also makes you aware of the Berlin Wall, and in one section where he writes about both East German and West German tanks with their engines running, it feels like a line of race cars roaring before getting the green light. Le Carré can make you feel tension, but much of his narrative and skillful writing is quiet. One sinks into the text as one approaches a hot bathtub, wanting to make sure the temperature is right. In that sense, if I were teaching writing, I would use the novels of Richard Stark, P.G. Wodehouse, and now John Le Carré as examples of writers who work on the highest level, yet still know how to tell a tale in a precise and perfect manner.

There are no happy endings in Le Carré’s novels, and the reader can feel the sadness throughout, but it’s a profound emotion. The combination of the spy genre—one that is certainly not James Bond-like—with believable characters creates something deeply moving. These men and women feel real to me, and I’m touched by the circumstances they go through.

As of this writing, I have had seven blood transfusions over five months. Since I have been home for over a week, I was called back to Kaiser for another transfusion. Before each transfusion, I have felt wonderful, yet the blood tests showed my Hemoglobin dropping below a certain threshold, and therefore, if in the hospital, the new bag of blood shows up, or if at home in my secure place of mind, I’m sent back out into the world of the hospital.

I’m placed in a ward where many people are getting their chemo for one or two hours. In my case, I had full-on chemotherapy twenty-four hours a day for five straight days, which in theory sounds intense, yet my system seemed to take it like having a glass of water. Which is odd, because chemo is basically poison poured into my body. The majority of patients have a horrid time with their chemo sessions, but for me, I’m reading a John le Carré novel with my legs crossed, drinking apple juice in a pure happy place of mind. I have been told by others about their wretched experiences of pain and nausea, and it makes me feel guilty that my relationship with chemo was like honey placed on sourdough toasted bread.

Psychologically, I do have issues while at home, and that is leaving the house through my twenty-step process that leads to the pavement below. I can walk down the stairs with assistance, but going up the stairs is very difficult for me. There is the feeling in my head that once I’m down the staircase, I will never be able to come back home. I will be stuck outside the house. This fear is based on falling twice on the staircase and on what, at the time, seemed impossible: removing my body from the cement steps. Besides the humiliation and physical discomfort, I somehow managed to crawl up the stairs and back into the living room.

People have consistently brought up the idea of me being outside the house and traveling again, but the truth is, I have no desire to leave the house. The rare times I’m in a car and see my neighborhood, where I used to walk every day, it means almost nothing to me now. My goal is not to travel through the United States or Europe or Asia, but simply to have the strength to come home from the pavement below.

I understand that my presence in this state of mind is perhaps not the healthiest, but when I’m at home, among books, music, and the endless stream of cinema, I really don’t have the passion or urge to physically visit the outside world. Going out into the world also means being concerned about other people’s staircases, chairs that are too low, and even problematic toilet seats. There is no guarantee that if I go to a restaurant, their physical seating or booths won’t become an issue for me. A Pandora’s box of fear and hesitancy opens wider each time I think about leaving my world behind.

The truth is, I have to overcome my mental issues in a manner that may be even more difficult than overcoming the cancer itself. But I will succeed. I will get my strength back and my brain together again.

For a band that has been around for over sixty years, it’s amazing that they haven’t fallen into nostalgia in such a direct manner until now with their video for the new song “In The Stars.” Unlike bands such as The Beatles and The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones rarely spend much time looking back. They always seemed more focused on the present and perhaps the future, even though age itself may stop them from doing another full-scale tour. Also, the Mick Jagger of the 21st century is so different from the Mick of the 20th century, at least on the surface. It’s hard to believe that Mick was once a dangerous cultural figure, but somewhere around Altamont, he decided not to take that leap into the destruction of the final moments of the Sixties. Soon after, he became obsessed with health, exercise, and the art of arena lighting.

So far, I think there have been three different versions of the Stones: the Andrew Loog Oldham/Brian Jones era, the Mick Taylor era, and, since 1975, the Ron Wood years. All three versions of the band feel distinct from one another, and each era usually has its own side musicians and atmosphere.

When I first saw the new video for “In The Stars,” I was truly shocked. Something from the past had suddenly appeared, yet it was very much a creation of 2026. It wasn’t just the AI versions of young Mick, Keith, and Ron, but the emotional context of the song itself. What exactly were the Stones trying to tell us? Every shot appears carefully planned, though Keith Richards’ hair seems to belong to somebody else entirely—perhaps Johnny Thunders from the New York Dolls. Ron Wood looks accurate, but Mick is almost disturbingly accurate. Seeing this younger Mick reminded me that he was once a genuinely dangerous figure in pop culture. The way Mick dances and sings now is completely different from the Mick of the 1970s.

The video is unexpectedly sad because traces of the Stones’ history keep surfacing throughout it. One of the dancers in the background wears a sailor outfit very similar to what the Stones wore in their 1974 video for “It’s Only Rock ’n Roll (But I Like It).” At times, I kept imagining I saw Mick Taylor or one of the other former guitar players somewhere in the crowd, though I suspect that is simply how the mind of a long-term Stones fan works while watching the video. The images play directly on devoted fans' subconscious.

The Mick Jagger of the 1980s onward became a very different man from the Mick of his youth. The decadence of the late 1960s and 1970s, Mick feels worlds away from the 21st-century Mick, whose focus now seems centered on health, exercise, stage production, and the ability to perform a two-hour show without collapsing. His ability to perform at 82 is genuinely amazing, but I still find the younger Mick—his role in the cultural landscape of the 1960s—far more compelling than discussions of stage lighting or physical fitness.

The shock of seeing an AI version of young Mick reminded me how beautiful he once was, and how sexy yet sophisticated his movements could be. He had enormous cultural power then, and this video brought me back to the days when the Stones could do no wrong. It’s unusual for the present-day Stones to approach their own past so directly, especially through controversial AI and deepfake technology. Yet the imperfections in the video are precisely what make it more than a simple rock ’n’ roll promotional clip. This is the first time since 1969 that I have taken the Rolling Stones seriously. That alone is amazing.

A journey has an ending of sorts, and then there is more. I went through six sessions of chemotherapy, each lasting five days straight under a constant drip, and the cancer that had settled into my body finally left due to the power of the chemo cocktail. I started chemotherapy in late January, and it ended on May 13, 2026.

During those five months, I was very much in a dream state, with one doctor’s face replacing another, and a team of what I called the Vampires—the nurses who worked throughout the night. I rarely slept through the evening because the Vampires came in to check my blood pressure, give me medicine, and draw blood in the darkened hours as well. Since I was attached to the IV stand, which carried both the clear liquid and the chemo, I couldn’t really move around. At night, they set the alarm on the hospital bed, so whenever I stood up or my feet touched the floor, the alarm would go off, and it was loud. I usually got up to urinate in the plastic urinal bottle, but once the alarm sounded, the nurses rushed in and generally hung out in the room while I peed. Usually, when one wakes up to urinate, one needs quiet, but here the alarm sounded like an attempted escape from a high-security prison.

The book I read during my last—and final—stay at Kaiser was Martin Amis’s Experience. I was aware of this book while writing my childhood memoir, TOSH, but I avoided the Amis book for fear I would be influenced by it. His book is also about a father-son relationship, and his father was the noted British writer Kingsley Amis. My dad was the artist Wallace Berman, and, on top of that, I share the same birthday as Martin. His book is nothing like mine. I was surprised that Amis had such a positive and strong relationship with his father. I was expecting more tension between the generations, but Martin had a healthy appreciation for Kingsley’s writing. The book carries the presence of tragedy and death lurking among its pages, especially when it comes to Martin’s cousin, who was brutally killed by a serial killer. Her death is reported in detail, and I wished I could skip those pages, but the murder is very much part of the fabric of the book.

Two weeks ago, I wasn’t conscious of the name Trevor Winkfield, though I was very much aware of his translation of Raymond Roussel’s How I Wrote Certain Of My Books (Exact Change), as well as the painting he did for the book’s cover. By chance, I picked up Winkfield’s book of essays, Georges Braque & Others: Selected Art Writings 1990–2009, and I felt as if I were reading my best friend’s book. Through Winkfield’s eyes, I discovered remarkable 19th-century visual artists, many of whom were outsiders within their own culture and time. His essay on the writer, collector, and wealthy eccentric William Beckford brought to mind the fictional character Des Esseintes from Joris-Karl Huysmans’ Against Nature. After finishing Winkfield’s chapter on Beckford, I went online to locate all of Beckford’s books. A must-have is his fantasy novel Vathek.

Now that I have jumped over the cancer hump, my interior life has become an essential part of my existence, reflected in my reading tastes. As of now, I eat and exercise at least twice a day, and my goal is to strengthen my legs. Walking around with a walker will shortly become a bore, and one must always move forward, though I do allow myself to glance at the past. It is all energy to move on.

My favorite type of new music is the kind I don’t know if I like. Sometimes I come upon a work that I don’t get right away, or perhaps ever. Song Cycle by Van Dyke Parks took me a long time to get into. Over the decades, I kept buying and re-buying that album in various formats: vinyl, CD, and, I think, even 8-track. Now I love that album. And I suspect I will have that same strange journey with My New Band Believe from the UK.

Their first album is maximum, in that the arrangements, orchestration (mostly acoustic instruments), and songs go from A to Zed without pausing. In fact, the silent parts between tracks are gone, so the album sounds like one giant piece, even though there are eight songs on this self-titled release. Flamenco guitar meets scratchy violin, with creative percussion behind it, keeping everything in an unnatural balance. It is like a Paul Cézanne painting where the still life of a table with fruit seems about to fall out of the frame.

A key song, “Heart of Darkness,” even features typewriter noise that somehow fits perfectly within the composition. One is truly confronted with a wall of sound, though not in a Phil Spector manner. It feels closer to free jazz, yet sounds meticulously constructed. There are also touches of Prefab Sprout in the mix, though I suspect every listener will hear something different. Perhaps it’s best for the listener to bring their own subjective ears.

I’m hearing the album through Apple Music, but I’m sure it’s available on all the streaming platforms. I also don’t have much information on the recording itself or who exactly is in the band, but even so, it strikes me as a remarkable twenty-first-century album.

What I do between visits to the hospital for chemotherapy is look at my ceiling and read Against Nature and The Complete Journals of Albert Camus. The one thing I don’t do is play vinyl records, mostly because my favorite albums are on the floor, and with my damaged legs (though getting better), I can’t reach them, nor can I sit down on a low chair. Once down, I’m really down. And it seems the speakers have a horrific buzz, and I can’t figure out how to fix it. Also, I don’t want to remove the ton of vinyl to reach a cord behind the amp. I’m sure it’s easily fixable, but I can’t deal with it for some reason

It’s not only due to physical reasons, but there are mental issues attached to this problem. I would rather live with the annoying buzz than get it fixed. The buzz confirms that the world is not perfect and that perfection is an illusion. I think that when I reach perfection, it only means there will be a following disappointment. To reach the ultimate means there is nothing higher, and in turn, it feels like a kind of death, or the end of a sentence. I would also be bothered if I had a friend over, we listened to the now-fixed hi-fi, and they commented that the sound wasn’t that good. That would upset me because it would confirm that perfection isn’t attainable. For my friend, this is an easy fix of some sort, but for me, it is like changing the universe, or confronting the impossibility of a well-lived life.

I was raised by a father who took chances in life, which at times left me feeling insecure, and I think my mom felt the same way. If money was running short, he would gamble on cards or pool at the local bar. He wasn’t afraid of change and trusted his skills at games, and I couldn’t understand how he could depend on those skills to bring money into the family for food. He lived day by day, and I wasn’t sure if there would be a tomorrow. That feeling stayed with me, and, in a way, the buzz of the speakers conveys at least a sense of consistency in one’s life.

Going through chemotherapy, and knowing the next session will be the last, opens up anything to happen in the future. It’s important to focus on the present and have small goals. For one, I have to keep up with my physical therapy to make my body stronger, because I literally can’t do certain things most people take for granted. I also have to keep my various writing projects at hand and remain healthy to finish them.

I’m reading the novel 10:04 by Ben Lerner, and I’m enjoying it immensely. I like any book where a character or two walk around New York City, so I’m an easy fan of this almost non-existent narration. I’m still under a hundred pages in, so it can turn into anything, but so far, the journey has been satisfying. Because I’ve had cancer and am dealing with the side effects of chemo, I’ve turned myself into Des Esseintes, where my world is solely my home, which I share with my wife. Beyond that, I barely exist in the world. So far, the main character in 10:04 has a potentially life-threatening condition while maneuvering through a dreamlike city.

I get stronger every day, but I can’t set a deadline for when I’ll be back 100%. I’m pretty sure that once I can handle the staircase outside—going up and down—I’ll return to the couch in the living room and read The Complete Journals of Albert Camus. Nothing interests me more than a writer’s struggle on the page. Physical health plays a role in many writers’ attempts to finish manuscripts. I’ve tried writing drunk, dead tired, or sober as a sunrise, and it’s still a battle between my brain and the empty screen in front of me.

Due to the lack of power in my legs, all I could do was watch a cockroach slowly cross the living room, and with all my intentions, I wanted to kill it. But once I remove myself from the couch, it runs into a darkened corner of the already dark room. I feel the insect is taunting me, daring me to raise my foot or, with my walker, smash it out of existence. I have this fear of a cockroach climbing onto my sleeping body on the couch, entering through my nose or ear, and raising a family within the canals of my body.

The good news is that it can’t go to my brain, because the ears and nose don’t have a clear passage to it. The worst that can happen is the cockroach gets stuck in my ear canal, or, if it's in the nose area, I would eventually swallow it and, more likely, pass it out of my system. I have no problem killing a cockroach, but the first thing I think about is The Metamorphosis, in which the son of a family turns into an insect or vermin and is trapped in his room. I think of that, and I would still kill the cockroach.

It’s not easy being me. I have to live with limitations, but within those borders, and with a touch of imagination, I can soar. A key reason why my hero is Jean des Esseintes, from À rebours. He lives in a home within his means and makes perfection a weapon against the world. Although he distances himself from the surrounding world, the novel is both a work of fiction and a critique of the era’s aesthetics. A home should be a reflection of one’s identity, but also serve as a fortress against nature creeping in through the cracks of the windows.

I got back from the hospital after five days of chemotherapy, and one thing is clear: I physically don’t feel that good when I get home. I’m in no pain, but when I arrive at the hospital, I’m usually feeling pretty good. The lack of exercise, along with all the chemo juice and IV liquid, causes my legs to swell, which makes it difficult to walk. My weight goes up and down like an overactive yo-yo—to the point where it’s not even worth weighing myself. It’s not an accurate read. I also feel dry to the bone, as if someone wrung all the moisture out of me and left me to dry under a desert sun.

One of the nurses told me it was a miracle I didn’t get ill during the chemo sessions. Most of her patients have vomiting, chills, and cannot stop shaking. I had none of that. I was comfortable throughout the procedure. But at home, it feels like a chemo hangover.

I tried to do some of my exercises, but it was tough going. Even raising my foot was an ordeal, and my step ladder felt like an impossible goal this morning. My appetite, on the other hand, is excellent. I had cold Wheat Chex, a protein smoothie, two small cheese-and-bean burritos, ice cream, and angel hair pasta with a salad—not all at once, but still a lot of food for me. For the past four months, I’ve been consistently craving junk food. As I write this, I could easily go for a potato salad from Vons.

I feel there is a void inside me that needs to be filled. But it’s physical, not emotional. I’ve been in a great mood throughout this sickness. Even when I thought I was dying last December—and I’m convinced I was—I felt OK with it. Death, what’s the big deal? My wife was terrified about my health, and that’s the only part that troubles me, that I caused her to worry. I wasn’t worried. Even then, I felt I would somehow come out of it.

I’m scheduled for round six of chemo, and that will be my last hospital stay. After that, I can concentrate on getting stronger, getting my legs working again, and saying goodbye to the PICC line and the walker. What I don’t know is how long this will take.

It’s funny—when the driver took me to the ambulance, I had direct sunlight hitting my face. It felt good, because I’m always inside a room with no sunlight. Still, it’s interesting that I don’t miss the outside world at all. I’m the type of guy who loves going to cafes, bookstores, and record shops, but since I got ill, I’ve lost the urge to go out. I have no emotional strings to my outside life whatsoever. I don’t even feel the need to travel, which I used to love.

I gave it up for the sick life, and I feel comfortable in that landscape.

As I sit on the bed, the sun is streaking into the hospital room, and it’s the first time I have even thought of sunshine. Even the rooms in our house are on the dark side, with heavy curtains blocking the light. Today is Sunday, which is usually quiet here on the fourth floor of the hospital. It’s very much full of cancer patients, or those going through transplants, mostly liver.

As mentioned before, there is one patient here, down the hall from me, who usually screams—not in pain, I suspect—but because she is in a landscape of fear, or perhaps she has horrific visions in her room. A lot of older people have a hard time making the transition from home to hospital, and often have to be tied to their beds, because they can harm themselves by pulling wires and attachments off their bodies in an attempt to free themselves.

When I first came to the hospital for observation, which eventually led to my first chemo session, I too had strange visions—or they were just dreams in the night. No one has been able to confirm whether I was dreaming, seeing visions, or simply dreaming without realizing it. Or it happened for real. A hospital is a building full of medical facts, but a mystery appears now and then.

One mystery is why my legs don’t work like they used to. I will eventually get my strength back—at least, that’s what I hope—but I have to exercise to rebuild my muscles. None of the doctors or nurses here are sure what caused the weakness in my legs, but I suspect it’s a combination of the cancer, the chemo treatments, and the medicine I take on a daily basis. There is improvement every day, but I’m a kitten rather than a lion, and my roar is more of a soft meow than anything else.

I’m currently on the second draft of my book on Japan while touring with Les Sewing Sisters. I stopped working on it when I was hired by the Kohn Gallery to write my dad’s (Wallace Berman) catalog for their exhibition of his Verifax artwork. It’s unusual for the son of the artist to take on the father’s work in this way, but I’m happy with how it all turned out—both the exhibition and the book.

But I had to stop writing the Japan book, and it’s hard to jump back in due to the cancer and its cure. I’m hoping I can start again shortly, because so far I’m happy with that project as well. I also worked on a documentary about the Les Sewing Sisters tour, doing the voice-over and writing the narrative. I’ve seen a rough cut of the film, titled Banality Attack, and I’m happy with how it’s turning out. The whole tour is seen through my eyes, so if you like my sensibility, I think you’ll like it.

So I have to live to finish my projects, and dying now is not in the cards I was dealt. I’m cancer-free now, but the cancer I had travels through the blood superhighway, so I have to keep a close eye on my health.

It is not a happy moment when you have to give up your clothes for a hospital gown in a very cold hospital room. When I arrive, I wear a long-sleeve t-shirt, a hoodie, baggy pants, and a pair of shoes. Within moments, I discard the comfortable clothing for a piece of cloth with snaps on the sides and a tie at the back. The hospital gown, sometimes known as the patient gown, was designed in the early 20th century; before that, patients wore their street clothing or PJs. There is no strong history of the gown, but it was designed or invented between 1900 and the 1920s, and hasn’t changed at all.

I have always felt naked (in a bad way) and awkward wearing the hospital gown. It wasn’t really made for the patient’s comfort but was designed for the nurse or doctor to reach the patient’s body as quickly as possible. The open-back version, the most common in today’s medical centers, leaves one’s back and ass exposed to the world if you choose to get out of your hospital bed. The gown is also not made for warmth, and a hospital room is consistently chilly. I often ask for an extra blanket and request to be heated, which feels great once the blanket is on top of you, but one cannot really escape the chill of the room.

The difference between one’s home and a hospital room is quite huge. The artificial existence as a hospital patient, where everything is handed to you, and one can’t escape the discipline of taking one’s medicine or food, means you are the center of the room and care. It is probably the closest to being a child, with your mother taking care of you, but now you are grown up, and yet everything is the same. Only when you are at home are you confronted with what you have to do to survive; the responsibility is yours. Back in the hospital, you are very much an object in the medical world’s hands.

Today I have to go back to the hospital for round five of chemotherapy. As usual, I’m nervous about going back to the drip-drip and, of course, wearing the hospital gown. In a manner, wearing the gown strips one of their identity, and the passive act of lying on the bed attached to the chemo bag for five days, having the chemo sucked into their body. I do have this fantasy that I will turn into a monster, or an East Hollywood version of The Hulk. After four rounds of chemotherapy, the cancer in my body has been crushed and destroyed, but the aftereffects of the foreign chemicals in my body have some lasting effects, such as numbing of the fingers and toes. That may last for a while.

There is a physical presence to this cancer, but also a psychological aspect that is as powerful and intense as the disease itself. Food has become a significant part of my life. There was a time when I never gave much thought to opening my mouth and swallowing; now I think about it all the time. My medical team tells me to eat as much as possible, and once that order was in place, I did nothing but eat.

It’s rare these days that I don’t have something in my mouth. I eat and eat, but I rarely gain much weight. I don’t know why my weight stays so low. At one point, I was 120 pounds, and now I’m 137. I used to avoid butter, but now I drench my breakfast—usually French toast sticks—in syrup and butter. After that, I have a protein smoothie with fruit and a lot of peanut butter.

I discovered Ben Lerner because he’s getting a lot of mainstream media attention. I bought all four of his novels and finished reading Transcription, which I enjoyed—it reminds me a bit of Paul Auster at his strongest. One of the characters is a child who shares my current taste in food. She rarely eats, but when she does, she chooses candy and junk food. That’s basically my diet right now. Her parents want her to keep eating no matter what, and my wife, doctors, and a nurse or two want the same for me. Sometimes I get full, but I always have room for ice cream. On a typical day, I have three different kinds within a twelve-hour period.

My body feels like a foreign presence. I’m not sure what the cancer has done, or more likely what the chemotherapy has done. Five days ago, it seemed the chemo had knocked the cancer out of my body. I keep picturing a sweaty worker feeding coal into a fire—that’s how I eat now. With some skill, I imagine I can get through two or three meals in a row without breaking into a sweat.

My only complaint—pushing aside the fact that I can’t fully walk without a walker or make it up the stairs—is that my fingers are numb and tingling. A nurse told me this might not go away. Now I wonder what other traces the chemo will leave behind, and what will stay with me for the rest of my life.

As of this moment, I’m sitting by the round table in our living room, looking at the couch across from me. When I look at it, I think back that I would have died on that couch. When I started to feel sick, and these strange sensations took over my body, I used the couch as my mental home within the home itself. As I lay there, I could feel my skin and bones becoming part of the fabric and cushions. It was very much like the Edogawa Rampo horror story “The Human Chair.” The hero of the story made a chair for a hotel lobby and left enough space inside it for himself to sit within the chair. There, he had the honor of a beautiful woman sitting on the chair, therefore, on him as well. As my bones turn to dust and become part of the fabric, I rot on the couch and eventually disappear.

I never liked to share the couch because I was struggling to remain alive, or accepting the creeping approach of death, of what I didn’t know. At first, they told me it was extreme acid reflux, called GERD, and the cough I had lasted for months, rattling my body. I felt like Keith Moon was hitting me with his drumsticks, each cough bringing intense pain, and in the middle of the night my body felt like it belonged to someone else. I had waking dreams in which I saw my cough as a beautiful woman torturing me, and she often turned into a male figure who merged perfectly with the female form. After three or four hours, the cough would die down, and then I could finally fall asleep.

At that time, I was sleeping on the couch, and the first time I came home from a hospital stay, I was dragged up the twenty steps and placed on it. I tried to get up, but didn’t have the strength to move, and I thought this was where I would be for the rest of my life. I pretended nothing was happening, and in the middle of the night I pissed in a water glass, and when I woke up, I had pooped on the couch, and on top of that, the internet was cut off. It was the lowest of the low, and I remember begging that I should die by dawn. I didn’t.

Instead, I developed a fixation on Instagram Reels, where people eat huge meals in their cars, behind the steering wheel, while reviewing the food. One of the popular food items was pizza dipped in butter chicken. I didn’t recall any pizza takeaway offering butter chicken sauce, which normally comes from Indian restaurants. There was no mention of going to an Indian restaurant for the butter chicken, so I wondered if this was now part of the pizza world. I would focus on this for hours, as if I needed to crack this code to better understand my condition.

“Party Fears Two,” as there was no room on the couch except for me. When I stopped watching Instagram Reels, I would watch Shrinking, which to me was the most normal show ever made. The acting and characters were not believable to me. I have heard that this is a popular TV series, yet I felt alienated, unable to move away from the couch. My space was limited except for my imagination, but what I saw on TV was people trapped either in the narrative or in some odd alternative reality. Then I got this strange phone call out of the blue. It was a doctor telling me that I had to go to the hospital at that very moment. As he talked to me, I felt very comfortable on the couch, and although I was barely in touch with the voice on the phone, I told him I was. I hung up on him. He called back ten minutes later to say that I must go to the hospital now, and I saw the concern in my wife’s eyes. Only then did I realize I had to get off the couch.

There is always a sense of worry when leaving the hospital to go back home after a session of chemotherapy. Before I go home, I went across the street to get a CAT scan to see what condition my cancer is in, and throughout the day, I was nervous about getting home safely with the ambulance service. I imagined that I would be discharged from Kaiser and a nurse would take me to my scan appointment in a wheelchair, which is directly across the street from my hospital room. To my surprise, it was a full ambulance transport with a gurney. My appointment was literally one block away, yet we drove there in the ambulance. It took a while to find parking for the vehicle, and it seems that the city does tow ambulances, which struck me as a bit odd.

In a tiny reception area—part of a trailer parked behind the Kaiser parking lot—my drivers squeezed me between their couch and table. The receptionist requested that I fill out a document, which is difficult to do while lying on a gurney, and, as one knows, a ballpoint pen doesn’t always work well in that position. But I did sign the document, which, in actuality, no one really cares about. I was then taken to another trailer where the scan is located.

In great detail, the technicians who run the CAT scan told me exactly what would happen. They inject a form of sugar, known as a radioactive tracer, and the cells in my body eat it up. On their screen, a bright spot indicates active cancer. The best result is when nothing lights up, but if I act like a Christmas tree in the middle of the night in December, then I’ve got trouble.

When I got home, I felt extremely exhausted. My legs were stiff and sore, and I felt a tingle in all of my fingertips. I was told by the technician that I was radioactive and should stay away from small children. It was one of the few times I refused wine with my dinner, because I was totally wired from the five days of chemo and the scan. I was buzzing up a storm, and I felt that although this was my body, I was wearing it like a stranger’s suit.

So far, last night was the strongest effect of what I have been going through. Overall, I feel I will survive this ordeal, but the results of the CAT scan are a Cleo from 5 to 7 series of moments. I have friends who are waiting for the results, but I’m not that anxious about it. I don’t want to be confined by news—either bad or great—but to live for the moment and feel the dice as it hits the side of the wall.