Twilight time

This post has a happier ending than the post title might suggest. This happy ending has nothing to do with the enclosed one of  the millions of kitschy pictures you get when image searching this phrase. It certainly has nothing to do with the kitschy song by the same name https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvRe_pt9XHo (believe it or not, I used to love this and all songs of The Platters – but I was in high school, and this was the music we danced “slow” to at parties…). But it does have to do with songs!

In a previous post I talked about exhaustion and fatigue. Here I will focus on fatigue, and indeed just one important aspect of it which I just named Twilight Time. Before getting that specific, let me invest in a paragraph on the general issue, which I may write about more. 

I believe we each get used over life to the way our brain works (pace, contents, whatever…), and take this function for granted. One radical aspect of my illness and treatments (and of course, so many other medical conditions), is that, boom, it is suddenly not like that anymore (that “boom” is in particular in contrast with gradual effects of getting old). Now, for very long periods (certainly many months for me already), for many hours in the day and night my brain can do only a tiny fraction (changing with time) of what I am used to. In particular, since March 2019, when my second chemo treatment (Ibrutinib) started, I just can’t do math, except in rather rare occasions (which happen only when discussing it with others, something which always boosts my energy). Never mind now the obvious meta aspects of mentally coping with this loss, wondering when and how it will return, etc. (which honestly, don’t occupy me much at all), there is a real need to find alternative activities for the huge amount of time I used to spend on this daily. Briefly, when in a reasonable cognitive state (“good periods”), I can still do many things, talking to Edna and other family members (the amazing air-train from Israel continues) and friends, reading and answering social or simple admin e-mails, short walks and this new discovery of blogging, and others, that are enjoyable or useful. And, amazingly, the slow pace which exhaustion and fatigue enforce in all my everyday actions (standing up, sitting down, dressing, walking, typing,…) actually makes passing long periods of time easier  😊.

But in this post I’ll focus on “bad periods” – hours that I call “twilight time” –  when I don’t have enough energy or concentration for the above activities. I am typically in bed (where I also spend many hours of the day), I am very tired, and I can’t fall asleep. 

In normal life, when tired in bed, I would read (I rarely listen to music in this state), or I’d contemplate  a math problem. And in practically all cases, I’d enjoy these for as long as they last  till finding myself asleep. I want to stress the joy element here – I love these activities (also) when tired.  I am just used to having my brain active and able to provide such joy when I am (or it is)  tired.

These options of reading and thinking stopped working for me. In these twilight periods, I found that I can read only for short periods (blurred vision is certainly part of my fatigue), and even if I understand what I read, I don’t enjoy it that much. Math is essentially out of the question.  So, I reverted to the obvious alternatives, which technology (thanks!)  is so useful in making these readily available and essentially free. Books on tape – certainly much easier than reading, and you can listen with your eyes closed. Listening to music I love, and there is plenty, mainly Hebrew songs and classical music. Watching skits and stand-up and poetry-slams etc. etc. [of course one could add movies, lectures, podcasts…but I found I have no patience for these]. Anyway, I naturally started doing these, loved listening again and again to favorites, discovered many new ones, and it was great. But as months went by, and these sleepless periods got longer,  I realized I enjoy these activities less and less. E.g. with audio books, it took me ages to finish hearing the last quarter of Wolf Hall, and I am now for a months in the middle of The Tin Drum, making very slow progress. My levels of concentration and comprehension, and thus enjoyment, make me stop it quickly after starting. Music persevered much better, but again, with less and less enjoyment (as obviously enjoying it also requires certain brain activity which fatigue must dilute).

It was thus a revelation (nothing less) to me when I discovered accidentally a few weeks ago (roughly when the new EPOCH chemo started), that in that very twilight state I can translate poems! I sometimes can’t add two digits in this state... And yet there is a clear intellectual, creative, nontrivial activity (whose product is also potentially fun or useful for others later) — in short, of the type I am so used to my brain performing — which I enjoy, and that I can do in that state, sometimes for a while. This discovery transformed these last 6 weeks for me (and frankly, became an obsession), bringing me enormous joy, which I hope will continue. 

I will write separately another post on my history with rhyming, writing variations on familiar songs, poem translations, the type of songs I translate, hopefully with examples, etc. But for now, here is the poem (my first translation in this twilight state) which I mentioned in a previous post. It is by the Israeli poetess I love, Rachel  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Bluwstein

who (as you can guess from the poem), had a mostly difficult (and short) life.

One central point for me when translating poems to English is that if you (non-Hebrew speakers) want, you can also hear them beautifully sung, and sing along the English version! I will elaborate in a future post, but like all others I translate, these poems were given music, and you can easily find performances on the Internet videos, cutting and pasting the Hebrew poem’s name (or asking your Israeli friends). Enjoy!