Saturday, December 17, 2011.
Lining Up For Books. Creating A Scene With A Former Fish Gill.
Mary Ann and I went to Mattina Bella for breakfast, even though I wasn't especially hungry. I gave Vincent Riccobono some grief about his being closed on Christmas Day. He knew I knew there was zero chance of his opening on that day, but he was jiving his cooks that he would be open, just to get a rise out of them.
This afternoon was the last big book signing event for Peggy And me. The Barnes & Noble in Metairie is so busy this time of year that it's almost impossible to park there. People are buying many of books, but the Nook kiosk is hustling, too. I wouldn't say that the electronic book has taken over, but it sure looks as if its heyday will begin soon.
Peggy and I sold hundreds of Lost Restaurants books between four and six, often with a dozen or more people in line for our jottings. I remained another hour to sign stock for the store. That was slow going, because people continued to buy the books, even with just me there.
To a party at the home of Ceil Lanaux, one of Mary Ann's best friends and the mother of two of Jude's fellow Boy Scouts during that long-ago era. More people than we expected, each with more offbeat stories than we usually hear. Margo Bragg, for example, is flying to India next week, to seek enlightenment from a guru. That sounds like an exaggeration at the very least, but it's not.
En route to the party, I was listening to the audiobook of Rabbit At Rest, the second-to-last in a series of novels by John Updike about one of the most flagrant buttheads in the history of writing. As I arrived at the party, Rabbit was in the hospital with a heart attack. One of the guests at the party was a heart surgeon. I got to talking with him about his craft. What percentage of people who in the past would have had bypasses now get stents and angioplasty? Not as many as one would think, he said. He added that bypass surgery is still the most effective treatment.
I bragged to him that a few years ago a discussion like this might have made me pass out. But the laser eye surgery I underwent in 2007 steeled my control of the involuntary vasovagal syncope (the medical term for a common fainting phenomenon).
This first happened to me when I was six, and another half-dozen times over the years. It was always triggered by hearing about some medical condition that may or may not be in the cards for me. Some of the causes included a doctor's informing me that I had a broken arm (something I already knew); another doctor's suggestion that I might need a cystoscope exam; and--most recently, in 2006--hearing a priest at Manresa tell at length how he lost his vision. All those times I zonked out.
The only danger in this is that if one doesn't sit down right away, one might fall and hurt oneself. These episodes are not only embarrassing but frustrating, in that there appears to be nothing the rational mind can do to fight the fainting spell off.
So here I was suggesting that this cardiologist keep on telling me about open-heart surgery, because I could now take it. And then here came the cold sweat, pale face, dazzled vision and light-headedness. I sat down, and told the doc that I wasn't as strong as I thought, and that the reaction was begin-- I didn't finish. Mary Ann happened to be standing there and she held me up. I was out for thirty seconds or so, but it took an hour before I shook it off completely.
It's funny. I just read something about this a week ago. It seems that the nerve involved evolved from an ancestral fish's gill. Because of that, it loops in an unusual way, and causes blood vessels to constrict at inconvenient moments. It should be renamed the wimp nerve.
