Forever Jung

Night before last I watched most of The Last Waltz. I don't know if I am high from malnutrition or I've lost my mind which is sometimes what I feel because two and a half weeks ago I felt great and now SOME PEOPLE who told me that I was sick have cut out my middle and have made me weak like in some creepy Twilight Zone episode and maybe I wasn't sick at all and it was all some insidious conspiracy...

But that's not where I was going. I thought The Last Waltz was amazing. An amazing document of men (mostly men plus Joni Mitchell) at the peak of everything. Their looks, their talent, their sexuality, their power. You could feel the heat emanating from the screen. I got hot just watching them. And for a moment I felt like I was there, I too was young and happening and wow it was so exciting to be there. In my head I was dancing in the front row and I was part of everything. And I remembered working with Neil Young on a movie. (Yes I did.) It was called The Human Highway and I played a groupie named Divine Light. Spent a month or so in New Mexico shooting...something. I think we made it up each morning. It's all a slight blur since there were...Let us say, medical additions to our daily life there. Devo was in it. Dennis Hopper. It was fabulously insane. Indians, Russ Tamblyn. I think Dean Stockwell was the director but don't quote me on that. And then I remembered sleeping with Robbie Robertson. (Yup. Is this the definition of a checkered past?) And there they were in The Last Waltz. Perfectly preserved in their thirty years ago selves. You look at Bob Dylan now and he's this old Jewish guy who with glasses might be mistaken for Woody Allen. But then...Then he was this young Jewish guy with...Something...And I was thinking how cool it was to have grown up in those times, with those people, that music, the excitement, the changes...The passion for everything. And, of course, the horror. We never forget the horror.

And speaking of horror. (Albeit in a minor key.) Lying in my hospital bed was definitely a Zen exercise of some kind. Hours alone with myself and the breathing of machines and the discomfort of tubes and needles. So it was just me and my thoughts trying to take me to a place of calm. And here is what I remember thinking most of the time...

I JUST GOT ROYALLY SCREWED! The last two years of my life have been constant mini nightmares that just wouldn't stop. (Thus, the Jung of my Title. Is that too on the nose?) The man I thought would be my partner for life left me high and dry and I got cancer! What the fuck? I asked my son at some weak moment in the hospital, "If there is a God, why is He/She taking away all the things I love?" And my son said without hesitation, "Maybe so He/She can introduce you to NEW things you might love...Like morphine." I laughed as hard as I could with stitches. And this was all in reference to not being able to drink a Chai latte anymore which was my favorite drink. How dumb is that? But I got screwed, dammit, I got screwed and there are no two ways about it. Shit happens. But I slept with Robbie Robertson and Robert DeNiro and I spent time with Neil Young and I wrote plays and I acted on Happy Days (That's a good one, eh?) and I refuse to believe that that's all there is. That I am going to be some tragic figure people talk about when I'm gone..."Oh, she was so nice, what a shame her later life was just one big piece of shit."

Now I feel I should be singing Rose's song from Gypsy. "Everythings coming up roses, this time for me." Oh, come on. Puleeeeeze.

But I don't know. I feel something stirring in the bottom of my much smaller gut. Maybe it's the muenster cheese I ate last night.

Maybe not.