My love, oh! my darling, I must, you know, dearest Clementine, continue to wear the deep-sea divers’ shoes with the lead soles to keep my feet firmly on this dry earth; and not float away, with these feelings I get being here with you. I may have to, additionally, strap the tanks on my back, –yeah, the Russian tanks! a nice pair of them, to keep me here, I feel so light-headed from your presence beside me next to the fire; in fact, it may actually take a regular nuclear attack submarine, crew, and the full compliment of atomic missiles – multiple warheads and all – chained to my ankle to supply me enough ballast..so you don’t, –Fly Me To The Moon! See? You do that to me, you see, –here! let me play that tune for you on my new tenor saxophone, the new old one you got me for the physical therapy, “DA-DA! DA-DA! DAHH..” right? Now! when we were kids back in the last millennium, we used to create lots of stuff together, you and I (you and me..heckle the politicians) and travel, –didn’t we! We took some trips, did the poetry thing and made lots of music together, beautiful music..great! seals along the Oregon coast serenading us for our honeymoon, throw ’em a fish. So now, what of that has changed? You have! You have changed, and you have only gotten better, and my health-related reporting has filled in some heavy books with my medical histories. First! first there was the eye-thing, that was first..involving the shot-gun..remember?? (sawed-off). Then,

and then there was nothing I can think of, for a very long time..Oh yes! and after that there was the ripe old age of 40, hit; and, of a sudden! the alarms went off, all the bells and whistles and we heard the order to..DIVE! Doctor opened the door to our exam-room, came in, looked around, stared blankly, and left. In a couple minutes he came back and asked if it was me (Chris Robertson). I said, “Yeah, that’s me.” and he had all these folders with the reports and evaluations of my blood tests. And so we studied him; and he studied us back, and so I said, “What.” And he shook one of the folders at me and said, “Based on these numbers I expected to find a 400-lb. man hibernating in a wheelchair.” (Mm-mm!) And I kept looking at him, and said, like, “Okay..what’s next?” And he said, “You’re going to die.” And he stared, deadpan, quizzically, letting the words hang there; then he cracked a slight grin, so I knew everything was basically okay; except I had a joker for a doctor..Doctor Jokester and Mr. Snyde, it was a snide remark, see? in the sense we shall all die, in God’s good time (except the Rapture). So, as it turned out I didn’t have A) narcolepsy, I had a thyroid with ZER0 function that made me sleepy all the time (from the nuclear radiation therapy I got when I was two after they cut out the tumor up in Burney from my shoulder, south of Mt. Shasta..and north, a little, of Weed; and a little while later, all the Strontium-90 dust blowing over from the A-bomb tests in Las Vegas when we were living in Newhall, California back of the San Fernando Valley); and then next on the list i didn’t have B) a hernia, I had what he termed a severe groin pull, and I remembered what gave me that; and whatever the third complaint was about, C) I didn’t have that either..yet! And, well, you promised..you promised to cherish me in sickness and in health. So here’s to that health! So then it went along fine with the new thyroid med’s for some years following, and laying off the lifting of heavy items, a little, like submarines, and, and tanks..You’re welcome! And so here at the Seashell Bar&Grill this morning, having an espresso and a soggy bagel with you with lots of cream cheese, looking back to the start of the new age, and our new millennium together up to now, my heart health-book grew fat, its pages un-slenderized with the dodgy details of 1) my hernia surgeries; and lots of NORCOs with that, –To the pain! while I line-danced, with a cane, at The Convention Center..following my discharge from hospital (so I could say I did); and 2) the amnesia’s, Spellbound! from the Hungarian Tokaji plus Hitchcock on our anniversary (lying on a bed, again, under casual observation after being ambulanced-down for the rarely diagnosed Transient Global Amnesia’s, or TGAs, as they say, with the vital functions monitors going BEEP! occasionally, watching the Ferguson deal unfolding being hosted by Megyn Kelly and her black leather skirt on FOX, –thanks Obamma! (if you had a daughter I don’t think she’d look like Megyn); and 3) the roto-rootering of my heart’s artery when it came to that and i was lying on my back on the cold concrete looking at marmalade skies waiting for the answering-quite-slowly ambulance to arrive and take me to all the newspaper heli-copter’s (waiting at the FAKE NEWS heliport) when I had my first coronary event..and long overdue; and then 4) peeing blood and visceral blobs with it from the cancer that was up there in my bladder, in your airbnb you were cleaning for Gary over there in Big Bear Lake, –in Gary’s toilet, Oy! And lately the surgeries and treatments for it numbering about a dozen, give or take, and interrupted only by 5) the life-saving four-way heart by-pass, with Dr’s Hilliard and Chung looking in on me through that, Hilliard making all the arrangements for it on quite short notice; and first night out after they chain-saw open my chest, fighting with Ci-Ci my night nurse from New York who was trying to kill me, I swear! dying of thirst, right after the surgery; and then, after noodling on the sax a couple of months to re-build my strength, back to the new #6, –the tubercular instill/feeds in ward in series in my bladder, and all of that; and still you hung in there with me in my sicknesses and my health’s. And so that’s why I got fluttery-feet’s syndrome..or FFS – not yet officially diagnosed – from all the love you give me without reserve and for that – plus the helium I suspect they inflate in the balloons on the end of the Foley catheter’s they shove up there Friday’s – I cannot stay earthbound; and for that, and all of the rest of it..and so much more, I love you! Now please help, won’t you? with getting this submarine cut loose from my leg (or my ankle, actually), here’s these torches, here, please cut it..it’s becoming a bother; and tanks!

~c.

“PS:I Love You..You-oo, you-oo Yu-u-u-u! I love You!” (Thanks,Paul.) And I think also if they..if they were between us, betwixt you and me..you and I, –I! I would fight the whole Russian Military Machine, with only my pocket switch-blade pen-knife in my hand, just to go get re-marry’d with you in Vegas; and an Elvis or two on the side to sing us that song, a song we love so much, –“Fly me to the moon! let me play amongst the star-r-r–rz, –in other words, hold..” (segue) “..and I-I-I (Clap-clap!), say that something..I wanna hold your ha-a-a-nd, –Komm, gib mir deine hand!” ~Tolstoy, Dostoevski, and Poe, Esq’s..the BEATLES! (“And Evgeny’s grandmother over there on drums.”)