May Day: Because ‘April is the Cruelest Month’

By the time this column appears, it will be May. How it will be May I do not understand because of a serious glitch in my matrices, both temporal and corporeal.

April has to have been the quickest month to have flown by. Road Runner-style. Like FloJo in her prime. Like Usain, it has Bolt-ed.

Taken from T.S Eliot’s canonical poem, “The Waste Land,” the line “April is the cruelest month” has been used both as a cultural metaphor along with providing the tagline for National Poetry Month and reinforcing the sentiment behind Marianne Moore’s famed line from her poem titled “Poetry,” which begins, “I, too, dislike it.”

The weather is unbalanced at best with the promise of what those showers will bring as she continues her teasing with sunny days and freezing nights, tricking us into packing away wintry layers only to be caught blue and ill at ease with shivering.

A flurry of activity and events have kept me running pretty much every day this last month, except for the few ones I was having yet more work done upon my vehicle [visible shuddering] or having succumbed to that comatose state of regret after being sufficiently pollinated so as to lay prone to the anti-histamines that be.

See, that’s truly cruelty. Having so much to do that you can’t possibly do it all. You can’t fit in everything or be everywhere. Behold, my troubles in the here and now without clones of myself upon this space-time continuum continue in encapsulated form.

Poet vs. form

Although April is National Poetry Month, I scarcely heard a word about it. I might’ve been late for a very important date, or scattered to one edge of the county hither and yon, but yeah; nary a word.

I got to hear some poetry being read by the most precious fourth-graders near the beginning, and by one of my favorite regional poets at the end of March, but apart from what little I do get time to read for pleasure, I got bumpkus on poetry this year.

My form was definitely both on and off again this past month, Mr. Miyagi-style, due to it becoming “Nicole season,” which means I’ll be gad-flying and flibberty-gibbitying to most every social and civic event around town. Call me Villanelle. Which reminds me, I’ve not caught that last season of Killing Eve.

Prevention vs. treatment

April was Head & Neck Cancer Awareness Month, and I have a dear friend who has survived it. She’s better known as “My Liberry Girl,” or Kelly Bryant of the Andrews branch.

When I walked in there, a merely fleeting 22 years ago, and met her and Jacqueline Hulse, I knew I’d found some precious gems before that word “gem” became overused by TripAdvisor and Yelp! users to describe things that are no longer hidden nor special.

To immediately gel with people you meet is the real treasure in life, and her unwavering and unconditional support of me is nothing short of miraculous. Much like her surviving cancer.

The type of cancer she had stemmed from what could be considered an almost routine affliction for GenX: HPV, or the human papillomavirus. While most infections never show symptoms no matter the place of origin, the virus never leaves the body and can manifest later in life in several ways, including oropharyngeal cancer, which can affect the tongue, tonsils and throat.

After her diagnosis and recovery, when the monthly Book Club was starting back up in late 2022, we chose to read the actor Stanley Tucci’s hybrid cookbook-slash-memoir, Taste: My Life in Food, as a homage to her conquering this devastating disease since Tucci suffered the very same form of cancer and they’d experienced the same side effects, which lead to loss of taste and enjoyment of sustenance.

When comparing these two, obviously Tucci had the access to world-class health-care centers along with famous colleagues joining him for his treatments. Kelly had prayers, family who never left her side, even during her hospitalization for COVID while undergoing treatment and a slew of supporters behind the scenes.

While so busy last month, our schedules never could overlap to do that interview. But in our brief conversations, she made it known that it will be done in the future. The one thing to take away from this secret and quietly lurking disease is that there is no shame in it.

Our generation didn’t have access to HPV vaccines, which caused a controversy when they made their mark on the health-care world in 2006 with so many socially and conservatively minded groups saying these medicines promoted promiscuity, rather than focusing on the ability for advances in science to offer hope for prevention and eradication instead of survival in later years of future generations.

The fact that this form of cancer can be spread by something as benign as an open-mouthed kiss surely escaped so many well-meaning do-gooders looking to save teenagers from one of their favorite historical pastimes.

Although this form of cancer is easily survivable by statistical measures, it doesn’t mean it’s no less serious than any other form of cancer since it requires both chemotherapy and radiation – and, as with most forms, early detection is key. My friend could’ve greatly benefitted from that vaccine along with the many others who’ve suffered ashamedly, silently and even unknowingly rather than being bombarded with those abstinence campaigns of the 1980s, which left us GenXers perplexed and unprepared for our futures.

Knowledge is power, access to information is a golden ticket in this life and nobody can make you understand that like a librarian. Good thing I know one.

Reels vs. real

I’ll readily admit my newest addiction is also a type of silently growing mass upon the mind of society in the form of Reels.

If you’re unfamiliar or want to continue watching the TikToks, knowing all the while you’re being tracked by foreign entities, the Reels are a conglomeration of both TikToks and amateur auteurs of digital shorts, who either lip-sync various sarcastic phrases, iconic movie quotes or provide snippets from sitcoms of all eras of television.

Pretty sure in the last month I’ve seen almost every single episode of Friends in either 30-second increments or three-minute clips. It’s warm and familiar and goes down easy, like a big bowl of Cream of Wheat on an icy morning. And it’s gotten me caught up on the last two seasons I missed, having moved to the wilds of Nantahala with no cable or satellite to keep me passive and immobile to the tube.

I’ve graduated and can gladly regress into whole channels of YouTube, into that best decade of yore, with reruns of WKRP in Cincinnati.

I’ve been glad to get back in touch with my beloved characters Dr. Johnny Fever and Venus FlyTrap, who lull me into such sheltered and groovy respites with a satisfying soundtrack to the apocalypse, as the real world whirls into chaos and nearer the hand-basket in disturbingly escalating leaps and bounds each day.

When asked what I think about current events, I’m thinking more about Andy Travis’ recovery after the tornado or the tragedy at Riverfront Coliseum at The Who’s concert in late 1979 – two of the very best and “special” episodes in the entirety of the show. So, I’m not much on watching the news; I’d rather report on things local and more relatable to what is going on in our area, what impacts people’s lives rather than what global ideologies and conglomerations wish to inflict upon our collective consciousness.

Too, every time I watch an episode I’m reminded of how much I adored Bailey Quarters. Mousy, outshined by the stunning receptionist, Bailey had the journalist’s instinct, which rarely got showcased. Never sure about her official capacity at the station, but I relate to her in this endeavor. Sometimes in the background, but always with the band.

Apocalypse/Armageddon

Somehow, we survived the Great American Solar Eclipse’s 2024 edition, or as some wordsmiths coined it “The Eclipse-alypse.” Whilst I would love to take credit for that, unfortunately I’m not that clever and was probably guilty of participating in too much “screen time” on the Reels.

Remember the hype surrounding the 2017 eclipse, which we had the privilege to encounter in the Valley at 100 percent totality? There were T-shirts, plenty of safety glasses, peopled parked and camped out along roads and in any field devoid of cows or houses, and schools were out for the students to enjoy the event.

There was an official “Passport” in the town of Andrews, which you could get “stamped” for your various eclipse-y events. There was an all-out media onslaught beginning a year before that August’s fairly amazing phenomenon. Although aging, I recall it well.

Do you remember the chill that enveloped us? I remember chickens frozen still in the darkness. The ring around the sun, the hours-lasting crescents on the deck by the creek. The eerie almost two-minute contemplation of our world without sunlight.

Nantahala was overrun with vehicles, nothing new in the midst of tourist season, except I counted 48 states’ license plates that day. Only Delaware and Hawaii were missing from my list. In advance of the once-in-a-lifetime event that I’ve now experienced twice, I also had started a social media onslaught, trying to entice visitors to my previous life with a somewhat clever take on Bonnie Tyler’s song “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

Despite all my efforts, I could hook no one in until later because in the mountains, no one was into paying for parking for this already free celestial event.

Looking back over those almost seven years, I understand the flurry of conspiracies and intricately drawn parallels both biblical and scientific. Something changed that day in August 2017, and something changed three weeks ago.

The more I watched and slunk down the warrens, I began to think all these concerned “net-izens,” or internet citizens, a bit off on their predictions, because there’s only One who knows the day of Christ’s return. Even Jesus said only His Father knows that hour.

While most of the “reel-ists” offer the standard “For Entertainment Purposes Only” disclaimers along with some certainly verifiable facts concerning the paths of the three most recent eclipse events, there’s a pervasive sensibility of late that things are not as they seem or as they should be. Nothing could feel more real than the idea that all of this is orchestrated, everything is connected into a divine plan.

Some people seems to have forgotten there’s a difference between a battle and a war. Both are still coming, but on no man’s timetable.

You only need your palm’s device to find and explore both the videos and book that will quickly allay all of your fears and suppositions. Good thing I know the One.

Ending vs. closure

Indeed, April is and was the cruelest month because, much like poetry, it “should not mean but be” according to Archibald MacLeish’s Ars Poetica, which is in keeping with our state motto “To Be Rather Than To Seem.” However, it’s ephemeral presence has flown into the murky past and I also recall a story about a pillar of salt.

My “mayday” shouldn’t be construed as a cry for help, because from here on out it’s all-new interviews and research and late-night retro TV for me.

And, baby, if you’ve ever wondered whatever became of me, just know that although it’s the end of the world, I feel fine.

Nicole Wright of Andrews is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Email her at nicole.wright.scout@gmail.com.