Dominique Valarcher teeters between extremes, always somewhere in the middle. The professor protagonist of Denis Emorine’s literary novella Death at Half-Mast, hecarries a name that in his native France is gender-ambiguous. His mother’s first husband had hoped to have a daughter with her before dying in a concentration camp, and would have given her that name. This leaves Dominique with the idea that he has two ‘fathers’, his actual father and the man who gave him his name.
Hence, he exists simultaneously in two realities, a theme that organizes and propels the novel. At the beginning, Valarcher reflects that his children are the same age that he and his wife Laetitia were when they met. He positions Nora, the young student who admires him and writes a thesis concerning his work, into a duality as well. She reminds him of the deceased Russian actress Tatiana Samoilova, persecuted and driven to despair by the Stalinist regime. This resemblance repeats and reinforces the motif of tragedy, oppression, and the loss of what might have been, in a somewhat mythical past that enters Valarcher’s life when he discovers his name’s origin. Even when love, study or attraction keeps it at half-mast, death is still present.
Much of the story revolves around Dominique’s internal life. He thinks of and relates to others in ways that stem from the role they play in the mental narrative he constructs for and about himself, rather than observing them as distinct people in their own right. He laments his daughters’ lack of interest in his literary writing. He thinks of his blood father, who raised him, as an interloper. He remembers a passionate night with his wife after she returned from being away somewhere with great nostalgia – along with the fact that he never asked where she’d gone.
Most notably, he agonizes over whether to leave Laetitia for Nora, which he sees as a traumatic moral decision he must make, before he receives any clear indication from Nora that she cares for him beyond friendship. He shows some self-awareness when he observes a male student looking displeased at his interactions with the young student. When it occurs to Valarcher that the young man might be Nora’s boyfriend, it occurs to him that he knows almost nothing about her.
Death at Half-Mast ends before Valarcher makes any sort of decision, leaving him face-down on the couch at his friend’s country retreat. This ending shows that the story isn’t so much about what he decides but about who he is.
Firmly ensconced within French and Hungarian universities, all the novel’s characters meet each other and continue to interact within the academic environment. The book’s language, however, is readable and the plot relatively straightforward, accessible to all those who wish to probe the travails of a man caught between shifting realities.
Presence of Absence by Pete Moorhouse (http://www.petemoorhouse.co.uk/)
First of all, here’s an announcement about one of our regular contributors!
Dave Douglas’ Invisible Ink
Dave Douglas has released a new collection ‘Invisible Ink’ full of new poems.
To those who are trapped in their human shells, here is a collection of poems about struggle, questions and restoration. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RWWVQ2S/
This month’s theme is Presence/Absence. What does it mean to exist, to belong, to take your turn at existence and leave a mark, or not?
This sentiment is echoed in Jaylan Salah’s tribute to the late poet Kevin Killian, where the loss of the writer sparks a retrospective examination of his life and work. Killian was unafraid to insert himself into the narrative of his poetry and prose, to make himself become forcefully present.
In a kind of contrast, Mark Young’s speakers withdraw to the background, relating non-linear information rather than personal narrative. Young’s work doesn’t always make linear sense, doesn’t create a speaker we can visualize, yet the lines of thought still flow, with the coherent rhythm and feel of an instruction manual. This suggests that it’s the ideas, or the ideas about the ideas, that matter over time, perhaps even more so than a particular person.
In Joan Beebe’s poem, ‘A Father’s Love,‘ a father and his disabled daughter fully show up for life together, completely present for each other because of their love. She also celebrates love for country in her July 4th Independence Day poem.
Chimezie Ihekuna shares an essay that outlines his interpersonal, sexual morality, centered on committed relationships rather than short-term encounters.
Some contributors ponder the place of one individual, somehow strangely present within a large universe. Who are we, what should we do here, what can we do here?
In Manion’s story, it seems to be one or the other: either you’re present for great worthwhile causes and adventures beyond yourself, or you’re fully involved in your closest personal relationships.
In Elizabeth Hughes’ monthly Book Periscope column, she reviews some books that focus on connection to one’s small circle and others that go beyond and connect to larger dramas, and several that do both.
Tina Heinrich’s Flopsy and Flathead and The Lumpa Rupper tell the story of beloved family pets. Nowrang Persaud gives a look at the culture of British Guyana while chronicling his own diligent hard work and journey out of poverty in Bitter-Sweet Sugar, while Michael Owhoko’s The Future of Nigeria outlines challenges facing a developing nation with a rich culture that’s plagued by corruption. J.R. Conway’s novel After the Ride uses a suspense novel and cast of characters to explore the human cost of cities’ paying for the homeless and mentally ill to leave town rather than investing in human services. Lawrence Wood’s The Transition: Initiated by Copernicus and Galileo, from Religion to Science looks at life at microscopic and then cosmic scales and encourages readers to choose a natural and scientific, rather than a supernaturally based, worldview.
Hopefully, this issue inspires you to be present, calls you forth into its world and encourages you to read its offerings.
One risk factor crops up for most of the USA’s deadliest diseases – aging. Can old age be treated, as just another medical condition? And how can we expand our healthspan – the portion of our lives that we’ll spend healthy?
San Francisco State’s University’s Department of Biological Sciences pointed towards some answers to these questions at their twelfth annual Personalized Medicine conference.
Personalized medicine as a concept, is not new. The basic idea goes back to Hippocrates, and modern precision medical tools can enable us to live out his vision of special care for each different patient.
Dr. George M. Martin, of the University of Washington, known as the ‘father of aging research,’ kicked off the day. His lab looks into progeroid syndromes, where people’s bodies age much more rapidly than usual. These are linked to mutations that harm parts of the genome that encode for proteins related DNA repair. Genomic instability and damage is a major pathological mechanism in progeroid syndromes and could be in normal aging as well.
He pointed to the need to look at patients who have only one copy of the genes for these types of recessive syndromes to figure out how their bodies compensate for the faulty gene and avoid showing symptoms. Also, he said we should study people who have antigeroid syndromes, who show less physical change than normal with age.
Dr. David Zarling of ImmunoLongevity Inc., works with small molecule drugs that can reduce the inflammation that can be a root cause of aging-related health problems.
This avenue of therapy shows promise in protecting mice against the negative health effects associated with unhealthy high-fat diets. Treating inflammation can be beneficial for diet-related and digestive conditions because we all have a microbiome of bacteria inside our intestines. Humans have around 100 trillion gut bacteria, representing anywhere from 500-1000 distinct species. Harmful pathogenic bacteria can impair intestinal membrane integrity, causing chronic gut inflammation that can lead to health problems that we associate with age.
Diabetics tend to have more opportunistic gut pathogens and fewer beneficial gut bacteria, pointing to another avenue of research and potential treatment for the condition.
Researchers have developed another new medicine, Tempol, which promotes faster metabolism by making it harder for beneficial gut bacteria to extract energy from the foods we eat. In another part of the body, these small molecule drugs seem to slow age-related macular degeneration in mice.
Dr. James T. Kirkland, with the Mayo Clinic, described how cells can go into a state known as senescence, where they permanently stop dividing and secrete certain substances that are linked to age-related disease. Senescence differs from cell death (apoptosis) because cell metabolism continues. Senescent cells accumulate in adipose fat tissue with aging, especially during our 60s through our 80s and in our skin.
Dr. Kirkland described new therapies known as senolytics, which clear the body of senescent cells that have accumulated after an injury. Developed with the help of big data, senolytic drugs can remove most senescent cells within one day. They have been shown to alleviate Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice, as well as increase bone mass, cardiovascular function and lifespan by up to 36 percent.
The first human trial of senolytics will be for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a severe lung disease.
Drs. Xi Cen (University of Rochester/Stanford) and Anoshua Chaudhari (San Francisco State University) spoke next, on the economics of aging. Older adults are an increasing share of the population in many industrialized countries, and we need to figure out how to afford to care for them, financially and logistically.
More seniors are now living in home and community-based settings, which seems good, although less is known about the quality of care there. There are also sometimes unintended consequences of programs set up to save money on elder healthcare, such as Medicare’s voluntary bundled payments to hospitals for certain medical procedures. This was intended to streamline care by minimizing unneeded subsequent hospitalizations after surgery, but is also now associated with exacerbated racial differences in hospital readmissions after lower extremity joint replacements. Hospitals may now have a financial incentive to preferentially admit patients they believe will be healthier and need less treatment, as they don’t get additional reimbursement for follow-up visits.
Research shows that women go to doctors more often, and that women have more chronic conditions. But men are more likely to get life-threatening conditions and die of them. So there are more older widows now in the population than before, who will need the social support of younger generations. The speakers suggested that industrialized countries with a greater fraction of the population who is elderly allow more migration of young people from other nations who can care for them.
After lunch, Dr. Judith Campisi, of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, explained cellular senescence much more in depth.
Why might we have evolved cellular senescence at all? This state plays several roles in the body: it promotes wound healing, signals when labor should begin, and helps with embryonic development.
As Dr. Campisi reminded us, evolution favors those organisms who can reproduce the most, not necessarily those who have the best post-reproductive quality of life. So people affected by the negative age-related consequences of senescence escaped the culling effect of natural selection.
The Buck Institute has been at the forefront of new therapies that eliminate senescent cells from mice, which seem to be able to prevent chemotherapy-induced toxicity. These drugs can restore Parkinson’s-like motor neuron damage and also regenerate old joints in mice too – but only when stem cells are still present within the appropriate regions of the body. So there’s a time window by which doctors will have to administer the medicine.
Dr. Matthew S. O’Connor of the SENS Research Foundation showed off his team’s research, modified cyclodextrin molecules that can bind to and remove cholesterol and ‘rescue’ aging cells. These molecules are able to treat Niemann-Pick disease in cats in the laboratory and hopefully also atherosclerosis in humans.
Next, Dr. Steven P. Braithwaite of the company Alkahest outlined the promise of plasma transplants from younger mice to older mice in the laboratory. These are shown to improve brain function and help older mice get through mazes faster.
Plasma isn’t so easy to use as a treatment, however. It’s hard to transport, gets contaminated easily, and requires that donors and recipients have a compatible blood type. So, researchers are glad that a partial plasma treatment has similar positive therapeutic effects.
Dr. Barbara Koenig, of the University of California – San Francisco, brought up what seemed the other end of the spectrum from life extension, choices regarding one’s death.
Currently, our medical system favors an open disclosure of information: doctors let patients know they are dying, rather than hiding the truth to preserve hope. We also tend to embrace advance care planning and have a desire to manage our deaths, which Dr. Koenig suggests stems from our Western individualistic mentality.
A recent California law permits ‘aid-in-dying’, drugs that facilitate death. This is legally distinct from euthanasia because terminally ill patients must administer the drugs themselves. Research into the effects of this law shows that patients who choose to obtain prescriptions of this nature are more likely to be educated and wealthy or otherwise hold a relatively privileged position in society.
Dr. Koenig suggests that people who are used to expecting more agency and control over their lives are more likely to request this sort of prescription. Many of these people get a prescription for the drug and never take it, just hold onto it as an option. And these are often the same people who are likely to request radical medical interventions to prolong their lives. So, ‘aid-in-dying’ and dedicated research into longevity may be opposite sides of the same cultural and bioethical coin.
Dr. Evaleen Jones, of Stanford University, spoke next, with the help of colorful hand-drawn slides, replete with trees and sunshine. She advocated a more civilized, and civilian-ized, way to practice medicine, where community health workers were educated and empowered to serve people through providing home care. This system is designed to assist patients on a large scale while also providing a pathway to well-paid employment for the caregivers. The need for healthcare for the aging is great around the world and also in Hawaii, where Dr. Jones is from, and this seems a humane and cost-effective solution.
Finally, Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, of the University of Washington, discussed how to slow aging in pet dogs. The biological process of aging in dogs is similar to that of humans, although dogs age more quickly. Dr. Kaeberlein advocates a focus on slowing aging rather than treating individual diseases, as aging is an underlying risk factor for many deadly canine diseases.
A research grant has recently made possible a large longitudinal study to sequence the genomes of different breeds of pet dogs. Through this, we aim to identify any commonalities among those dogs who tend to die young or those who tend to live longer. The study also involves observing dog microbiomes and behavior/activity levels.
Experiments involving helping out our pets engage people in citizen science. Also, pets share our environment and thus research into their medical needs offers more potential insights for human treatment than looking at lab mice.
So far we know of a gene that controls dog size, and that larger dogs age more quickly. Also, researchers have developed a medicine, rapamycin, that can rejuvenate dog heart and immune function. Five years from now, Dr. Kaeberlein said, he expects veterinarians to have common treatments available to extend our pet dogs’ lifespans.
This year’s Personalized Medicine conference pointed to the frontiers of scientific research into cellular, molecular and genomic therapies for age-related disease. The choice of speakers and topics also reflected concern for how society as a whole could respond with compassion and wisdom to the need to provide care on many levels for an aging population.
Molly Gaudry’s Desire: A Haunting presents a familial love story where most characters are no longer in the realm of the living. This is a novella made poetry through line breaks and the interweaving of fantasy into otherwise realistic lives of gourmet elegance and past violent trauma.
In a seaside cottage, a speaker encounters the first and most persistent of many ghosts, Pearl Prynne (the more famous Hester Prynne’s daughter) who chooses to go by the name ‘Ogie’ – a kinder, gentler form of ‘ogre.’ Ogie and the narrator establish an unlikely years-long friendship, cemented by the fact that both seem incredibly alone.
The setting, while replete with cherry blossoms, herbs, lovely scenic views, and food and cocktails that the characters prepare in poetic sequences that could fit into a cookbook, doesn’t contain many live humans. The few whom the narrator does interact with at the local markets are wallpaper characters and the exchanges become awkward due to the vivacious ghosts’ invisible actions and sense of humor.
The ghosts, starting with Ogie, who’s thirsty and enjoys pretending to eat and drink at the narrator’s table, come to life physically and emotionally on Gaudry’s pages. They request their favorite foods, care about what they’re wearing and how they look, celebrate present-day holidays in real time, and get injured in ways that require stitches.
For a book that’s populated by ghosts and fragmented memories, there’s a lot of emphasis on the ‘present moment.’ Current holidays and seasons pull the story along and serve to transition between scenes and interludes. Ogie becomes bored and wants the narrator to join her in drawing as a hobby, something to ‘pass the long autumn hours.’ Today’s world doesn’t disappear, even when we become absorbed with the past.
A theme of nurturance and caregiving emerges: Ogie adopts a ghost-boy, William, who needs to be looked after, who wants and takes in a pet rabbit. Characters, real and otherwise, need clothing that has to be mended with care, and people give each other gifts.
And while she takes awhile to get there, and first gives a few fanciful renditions of her past and her death, Ogie reveals that she knew the narrator’s mother and helped to care for the narrator as a child after a nearly-unspeakable tragedy. The narrator’s childhood memories, as well as Ogie’s own past tragedy and loss, only come near the end in a section that offers the closest to a literal rendition of events that this book gives.
This, and the ending, suggest that the point of this story is that Ogie, William, the narrator, and others have learned how to get along and care for each other as a little family. Knowing who everyone is, exactly what happened, and when, is somewhat incidental.
Perhaps it is this implied focus on love and care, rather than linear memory, that can facilitate healing from the trauma and betrayal of the past. There is definitely tragedy and pain in the narrator and her family’s past, and Gaudry conveys this through style as well as plot. She crafts flowing lines of both languid and purposeful beauty, then screams, through capital letters and occasional pages with only one single word, about what and who cannot be ignored.
This tale does not offer a clear progression out of the past into the present or the future, or from ‘victim’ to ‘survivor’ as readers have come to expect. Even as both main characters grow stronger, they remain involved with the ghost-world, as the narrator clothes a whole new cast of phantoms.
In keeping with the poetic, implicit style of this book, there’s no concrete atonement, restitution or forgiveness for past wrongdoing. Even an actual apology isn’t passed on directly: the narrator sometimes backs off, leaving the ghosts to communicate with each other rather than passing messages through her.
Yet, we see constant motifs of cooking, washing, clothing and mending, and the narrator and ghosts find ways to continue to interact with and nurture each other. Through these, and by the story’s resistance of linear narrative that would include a scorekeeping account of wrongdoings, Gaudry’s work points to a subtler sense of peacemaking and restoration.
