Not with a whimper, but a bang

My usual method of operation at the close of a semester or a session's worth of columns is to search for a theme throughout what I wrote. Then I talk about that particular theme in a new way, and then I sign off for the time being. \n After two weeks or so, when school is back, the column takes off again. I talk about old things in new ways, or vice versa. I find a devil or two in my haystack, I identify a problem with how society deals with HIV; alienation, lack of touch, lack of faith, irresponsibility, blind faith or a touch of good old fashioned evil. \n The presence of a pattern is an invitation to break it--and the acknowledgement of a pattern is a demand to do so. So it is with the columns in this past summer.\n I faced the chimera of not feeling well, but not feeling like I'm digging my own grave. This is a nether region of health that doesn't translate to words. I don't look sick and I manage not to act sick, and I wonder if I am sick. The tree falls in the forest, but what about the sound? \n In my last blood test, my viral load remained undetectable. My CD4 count? Your guess is as good as mine. For the second time in a row, the lab failed to report the results. The undetectable status means there's a good chance the CD4's went up--in fact, a likelihood. \n Partial information is often as helpful as none--the game of supposition is weighted too heavily to the negative to be fair to all possibilities. I'm hating the lab right now--a lot. \n The task of keeping my spirits up has fell to me this summer, a very new responsibility in my life. Chuck works two jobs, my pals were in summer school, and I hung around the house like a cobweb. I didn't feel like sitting through movies, and the movies all seem so contrived. I wasn't excited about any new album, clothing sale or technological gizmo. \n I walked with my head down and my guard up, but only against myself. I was vigilant for any signals that the liver's going south, the kidneys agonizing or my checks and balances becoming suddenly overdrawn. \n I was paranoid and transcendent, and pretty much all at the same time. \n I wasn't unhappy, but I was mathematical. I weighed the essence of what might be wrong with me, subtracted from what isn't wrong with me and weighted the factor of ego to attempt to arrive at an answer to the most basic question--"Am I going to be alright?"\n I was at Positive Link on Thursdays in my HIV test counseling stint. One person asked me a question about the result I reported, a negative, thank God. The question was--"If my test was positive, how long would I live?"\n This was the first question I asked Dr. Tom when we met, yet another case transferred to him, the AIDS doctor of South Central Indiana. I was sitting in a small examination room at the main offices of Internal Medicine Associates. I had a list of about twenty questions, and I tried not to act frightened. \n Until that moment, I'd always believed that efficiency ruled the outcome of everything, that if one tried hard enough, the outcome would always be good. I thought that if I could learn everything about HIV, be the ultimate good patient, eat right, stop smoking and never touch alcohol, everything could be hunky dory again. \n As I learned more, I trusted less--that's almost a mathematical representation of what should happen as any brain expands. I saw that no matter what I did, I wouldn't be free of HIV. I would never again be who I was before.\n I've become faithful to standing watch for patterns because I find them involved in everything. The pattern of a day, the cubist quality of college courses, the moving jazz of Stuart Davis' work in the IU Art Museum. Patterns are the maintenance of human understanding, the oil of verbal communication, the way chitchat goes at a party. \n That question of life expectancy, it's a pattern that lifts its head in my routine from time to time. I thought I had erased it by telling myself that no one's life span is guaranteed, that people die unexpectedly on a regular basis. \n Because I look for patterns, I look for the commonalities they indicate, the way a culture thinks. Our culture thinks about death far too often, and in very odd ways.\n I grew up in a house that was haunted--yes, actually haunted. I grew up hearing voices downstairs in the middle of the night, creaky steps too regular to be the settling of an old house at night. I grew used to the idea that there were choices and continuations to be dealt with long after we conventionally believe. \n I think this life goes on, but not the physical part. The large houses, the mausoleums, and the Lexus have nothing to do with it. It's those small acts of good will, faith, and love that will accrete; they are the termite mounds of the next dimension, the building blocks of a new and different way of living. \n I was on the receiving end of many of these small acts this summer--my CIA lapel pin from Karen, a German postcard from Galadriel, a rocking chair on the porch with Donna, a dinner with my old friend Jerry…that's just scratching the surface. \n My answer to the question I was asked? I said, "You can live as long as you want to live with HIV." Dr. Tom would have been proud.