Astute readers will have concluded by now that I have survived knee replacement with it’s hospital, surgeons, anesthesiologist, nurses, germs, and bills and now face the continuing dark night of the soul-in-rehab, and the possible risk of opioid addiction.
Several times a day, painful unpleasant exercises are prescribed. Several times a week even more painful and unpleasant exercises are administered by professionals using a battery of devices worthy of the Spanish Inquisition.
Sleep is difficult to come by due to an inability to get in a position that doesn’t cause misery at the site of the wound, the hip, shin, foot, leg, back, shoulder. Though I am tapering off the drugs, since they don’t really do much to manage the pain, tthe haze of pharmaceuticals does manage to make life even weirder, concentration difficult, and memory unreliable.
Clearly what the word needs now is not love, sweet love, but a lot better drugs. Depending on who you listen to, I should be back to normal in another month, three months, eleven months, never. This is what passes for the good life if you have entered your golden years.
So, how do I pass my time? There’s always the 24/7 coverage of our slow motion civil war, decline of democracy, income inequality, unregulated corporations and markets, climate change and imminent risk of war, famine, pestilence and death. But that’s even more depressing and hopeless than rehab.
Heavy duty literature and non-fiction are out of the question in my gooned state, but I have enjoyed one of the more recent Ian Rankin mysteries, “Rather Be The Devil,” with his Edinburgh detective John Rebus who is aging even less gracefully than myself.
I also had the bittersweet pleasure of reading the late Philip Kerr’s final installment of the Bernie Gunther saga. He chose to end where he began, with a prequel to the “Berlin Noir” trilogy. In “Metropolis,” we see his tough cop in Weimar Berlin about to face a life with Nazis in control. Readers of the entire series of 14 books, who know what comes next, will be inclined to keep yelling at Gunther to beware.
I count exercise reps to the tune of podcasts including “All the President’s Lawyers” with the mordantly witty attorney Ken White, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” for a laugh, “Against the Rules” with Michael Lewis investigating the need for referees in life, “Filmweek” to learn what I am missing because in Podunk we only get a fraction of the movies reviewed, “Here’s the Thing,” especially when host Alec Baldwin is interviewing actors and musicians he admires, and “The Daily” on days when the Times has a big story, and the “London Review of Books” when they discuss writers I care about like Auden, Alan Bennett, Housman, Hardy and Larkin.
Newspaper and magazine writers I wait for are polymathic Adam Gopnik and Jill Lepore in the “New Yorker,” and the estimable, and fearless Catherine Rampell in the “Post” on economic and political matters. Her evisceration of Stephen Moore was priceless and her take on what Trump’s taxes might reveal illuminating.
Also a must read in the Post is restaurant critic Tom Sietsema. I am unlikely ever to dine at the places he recommends, but my mouth waters from afar. One can dream. On MSNBC, Nicole Wallace steals the show by being regularly reduced to either fury or fits of the giggles at the absurdity of the trump administration’s incompetence and transparent corruption.
I watched with sadness the end of run for “The Big Bang Theory,” and “Veep,’ which maintained their high standards to the end. I also stuck with “Game of Thrones” all the way, through, by the midpoint it began to seem obvious it would all add up to less than the sum of its parts.I was bemused by the fanboys and girls who seemed outraged that the Dragon Queen broke bad. If “Thrones” had a theme, it was that power corrupts, so a bit late to be surprised.
Also highly amusing to see the “heroic” Jon Snow and Arya Stark sent out to pasture, Sam Tarly’s proposed democracy laughed out of court, the useless Bran installed as a figurehead, while Tyrian and his wised-up, cynical old cronies are left in charge, like a bunch of Daley machine or Tammany Hall pols, to try and make the place run. (Fans and foes alike may be amused by “Game of Jones” on YouTube which has Leslie Jones and Seth Meyers critique the show.)
I am enjoying “Gentleman Jack” on PBS about a self-liberated Victorian lesbian who takes no guff, mostly for Suranne Jones who breaks the fourth wall for frequent winking asides. I’d also recommend the bleak “Chernobyl” on HBO, a good cast and a useful reminder that humans with their hubris are often incapable of managing the deadly things they create. And surprisingly, a six-part “Catch-22” on Hulu is very good, unlike the incompetent film adaptation of 1970.
Now, back to the knee bending reps, ice packs, and pills. What a rich, full life.