Notes from a Hospital Bed.

When I begin to feel trapped, I begin to feel stabby.

So, when I had a run-in with a doctor earlier today, it is not surprising that thoughts of stabbing her in the neck with a penknife came to mind.

However, seeing as we were disagreeing, me with a weapon of non-emotiveness, she with a weapon of self-righteousness, on whether or not I could be released from the hospital tomorrow, I “played the tape,” followed the thought through to the end like video tape. I realized that, huh, stabbing a doctor, or anyone for that matter, would likely inter me for much longer than the length of treatment for an eye infection.

So, I decided against it.

Not that I have a penknife.

I have been in the hospital since Monday morning. But, I also spent much of Sunday afternoon in the ER. I have a stye in my eye, and because of the compromised nature of my immune system as a result of this month’s chemo, it became nuclear. I look as though I met Rocky Balboa’s right hook in a dark alley. Or maybe it was a light alley, since this one really met its target.

Alternatively, it looks as though someone has inflated a balloon underneath the right half of my face, even down to my neck. It’s unpleasant to look upon, and worse to endure.

That said, it has begun to get better; the swelling decreasing, the fatigue from the rancorous fever it brought on abating.

And I want to go home.

I am not “supposed” to be here for another two weeks. I am, and have been, emotionally prepared to spend one week in the hospital per month for as long as these rounds of consolidated chemo have been going on, following the near month-long initial round/internment.

There is only so much juice I have. And it has all been drunk.

Last night, I hit a wall. I was getting angry at a tissue box whose perforated opening I couldn’t find, and therefore whose box I ripped. I paused, acknowledging the irrational reaction to an inanimate object, asked myself why I was so angry, and in that pause, I began to cry.

Alone.

In a hospital bed.

There are few things more pathetic. (And I don’t mean that in a judgmental way, just the simple, plain, sad way.)

I sobbed for a few minutes by myself, and then called a few friends, finally reaching one. And I sobbed on the phone to her, my isolation began to abate, but the feeling of frustration, powerlessness, being OVER this whole “being a patient” thing did not.

The hardest thing about it, is that I have no, none, nada, not one iota of control over this situation. The eye infection, the alarming beeping from the IV machine as it repeatedly announces itself for attention, the doctor who opens the door and then says “Knock knock,” the necessity to ring for water, for a towel, for a meal that has been nuked into oblivion, the impossibility of fresh air or sunshine, the tethering to a chaotic and unpredictable schedule of lab draws, medication times, the measuring of my heart rate, my temperature, even the volume of my pee.

The cancer.

I have no control.

And so, forgive me, oh snarky doctor, if I’d like a modicum of freedom, self-sufficiency, dignity.

Even at the bloody expense of your over-eager, raised eye-brows as you lean in with prodding and painful fingers to my face, and pose as a question the statement, "I hear you want to go home, against doctor’s advice?"

“Not all of them,” I don’t give her the pleasure of flinching at her unreasonably forceful hands.

“Oh?,” she leans back, eyebrows still forehead bound, “Which doctors have said otherwise?”

Today, I have been seen by 5 doctors, including Ms. de Sade. Two have said they don’t see a problem in me being released tomorrow, that I can, indeed, do much of this at home. It was, in point of fact, a doctor who saw me first thing in the morning who suggested that I could do all this at home in the first place. He then told me not to mention he was the one who mentioned it. He is a doctor I trust. He is in fact the doctor who gave me my diagnosis of Leukemia when I was in ER at midnight just over four months ago. He's been compassionate and an thoughtful listener and explainer. Plus, he’s cute. For a married guy.

Looking flatly at her through my good eye, and with disdain through my swollen one, “I just said, ‘Not all of them.’” 

Purses lips, “We’ll continue discussing your case.” Exits.

Is this a prison? And please, please, I beg you, please do not give the rational rationale: they just want to ensure your health. They just want to make sure you are healthy.

I concur, and concede that my medical health is of optimal import in their assessment. I am sorely sure that my emotional and spiritual health is not.

***

Well, two hours have passed since I wrote those last words, as a friend came by with food and fellowship, and now those two “f”s have counterbalanced the one in “f*ck you,” so, I’ve run out of resentment steam. 

Luckily, my friends do have my emotional and spiritual health in mind. 

Thank god for that. 

Bedframe Breakdown

I imagine a lot of tears have been shed over the years that people have attempted to assemble IKEA furniture. Luckily, now they have completely eliminated all language, so you get a Ziggy-looking dude smiling at you, and lots of pictures with “x”s through them as they indicate the proper size widget you need to use.

However, I wonder how many people are brought to tears because of a full-blown emotional breakdown while assembling IKEA furniture.

Yesterday, that was me. Sitting in the open center of the assembled “Brown-Black” bedframe, I began, suddenly to cry. That cry became a sob, and that sobbing became wailing. WTF.

To accompany me on my single-handed, self-sufficiency journey of furniture assemblage, I listened in a row to three albums of artists I love and rarely listen to. I rarely listen to albums all the way through, what with the advent of the shuffle setting on my iPod, and the theft of all my actual albums a few years ago. But, I knew I wanted a theme to guide my work, to get into a groove, into a mood, and so I listened to Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Fairytales, Ari Hest’s Twelve Mondays, and lastly, cue breakdown, Dave Hause’s Resolutions.

While listening to the Dave Hause, I began to sing along. I began to sing along in a way that I don’t really do that much. In a whole-hearted, but not like overly dramatic, just a full way. Full, is the word for it. I was full with the words I mimicked, and the words were these, over and over: Pray for Tuscon, Pray for me; Yeah, Pray for Tuscon, Pray for me. And I sang, in my gut, in my belly, in my heart, as I screwed the eight-thousandth manual screw into the frame. And I started to cry.

There is something you should know about me that very few people know, because I keep it private, and a secret: I love to sing. I more than love to sing, it is a source of joy for me, a source of filling up from the inside that nothing, nothing, NOTHING else in the world offers me. Nothing.

Not painting or drawing, not writing or playing the piano (which often leads to singing, but not always), not performance or acting. No one knows this, because I am ashamed. I am ashamed of how much it means to me, and the fear that I’m “not good enough.” I am ashamed because I don’t want to “sing pretty,” but because I want to sing passionately, and those don’t always intersect. I am ashamed because I want to sing in a rock and roll band, and I feel too square, and too removed from any of those characters. I am ashamed of my visceral, incredible desire and passion for singing because I give it so little credence, I’m embarrassed to mention it.

It’s like saying you have a life passion for cooking, but you always make microwave dinners.

If you only let yourself pick up a vegetable and a knife, your heart would soar, but you don’t.

Partly, I feel ashamed of my passion and desire to sing because I feel that I am such a magpie of creative endeavors, I feel that singing becomes just another item in a long List of things Molly would Love to do. But not something actually worth paying much attention to, because the subtitle of that list is, But she Doesn’t.

I grabbed onto the railing of the bedframe, and I ached. I called for mercy, for help, for guidance. I cried at the stark reality that LIFE IS SHORT, unpredictable, and I almost lost mine. I almost lost my whole and entire life, without doing that which ultimately brings me the most joy in the world. I almost stepped out of all experiences ever, without allowing myself to do the thing that makes me alive.

I cried that I couldn’t be taken away from this yet. That I must, that I have to be allowed the time to try, to do this, to allow myself to pursue this.

I was almost taken away. I was almost ended. And my fear, and my procrastination, and my dismissal of myself almost allowed for it.

I recently read Bel Canto, a novel by Ann Patchett. In the book, a character, a guerilla, jungle insurgent begins to sing during the several-month hostage situation with a world-famous soprano. When he begins to sing, the whole audience is flattened. This voice, Ann writes, almost died in the jungle. No one would have ever known about it, nor would he himself; it would have just died.

I’ve been talking with others lately about “the burden of potential,” and the soul-cry to engage in the things we feel drawn to, and I've been reading about the strength of vulnerability.

Over the years, I have taken private voice lessons with a jazz singer. And then stopped. I have trolled craigslist ads for bands looking for a singer, and even recorded a sample of myself trying too hard and sent it to two bands who weren’t interested. For a period of time, I was looking back at these ads every few months, but too ashamed to try, feeling musically uneducated, and vocally untrained. Because, the truth is, I don’t really know how to sing in a rock and roll band. I know how to sing like me, and even that is so rusty, the pipes are red with oxidation.

So, who can help me with this? Who I don’t feel ashamed to be myself with, because, obviously, I really really cannot do this on my own.

I texted a friend of mine that I was having an existential crisis, and wondered if I could come sing with her jazz band in practice.

I got back to screwing the 8,000 and one'th screw ... Surrounding myself with new stuff, updating my image, as if these are numbing agents, as if they work, as if a new bed could be a balm or a substitute for actually living my life ... I bawled again.

I texted another friend of mine, one who is actually in a rock and roll band, and asked him if I could practice singing with him, not with his band. Because, I’m not really brave enough for that yet.

Both answered, Yes, of course.

I have to take action around this. The whole “Life is short” thing is so aching right now. That I could let another decade go when I don’t engage this desire --, well, it’s more than criminal. It’s disastrous. And it is neglectful and abhorrent of the fact of Life itself, that not everyone gets.

These two people I’ve asked are people I trust, and who I don’t mind not being perfect around. Because, as I’m reading, the key to being vulnerable, the key to being brave, to making change, is to allow ourselves to be imperfect. To embrace that we are exactly who we are, and that is enough.

I don’t know anything beyond the fact that I will call these friends today and “set something up.” I don’t know what that means, what it will look like. But I know that the passion I felt as I shook the wooden slats, like bars on a prison ... – it is not that I am “unwilling” to be silent anymore, it is that I have become unable. 

More Than Cafe Platitude.

I wish I’d sat down yesterday and written the blog I’d composed in my head. It was about feeling very differently lately, looking up and realizing something is different, that there is a filter forming around everything in the world, and that filter is called Optimism.

I remember several years ago, upon entering therapy, I sat on my therapist’s couch and identified an emotion that was not depression, and was not elation. I was not sure what it was, but it was something different than I’d ever really experienced: I began to gain a range of emotion.

That is how this feels, this identification of “optimism,” a new feeling, a color new to the palette that I haven’t had access to before. “Optimism,” What’s that?

I have begun to feel that everything is going to be okay. However trite that sounds. But more it’s like I’ve begun to feel that I am okay. I began to recognize yesterday that I was beginning to hold myself and my judgment of myself looser. That somehow, I’m beginning to feel that, actually, I’m doing pretty damn well. That, in reality, I always have been.

Somehow it began to feel okay if I go back to my job as a receptionist. That I don’t feel the aching judgment or condemnation of myself for “wasting potential.” Because, somehow I feel that I’m actually doing enough other work, that I am made of enough substance that that is okay right now.

I began to see that I am facing cancer. That I have faced cancer.

I have begun to see that I have lived through one of the hardest and most emotional and devastating things that I ever have, and I have come out, more than alright.

I have begun to see that, in fact, I have faced this with more courage and love of myself than I ever have; that I have lived. And I have lived well.

(In fact, as I write this now, I am crying with acknowledgment of that truth; the truth that, goddamned, I have done good.)

The change of angle, the change of position of my perspective as I look at myself. When a mountain moves a millimeter, sure, it’s only a millimeter, but for Christ’s sake, you’ve just moved a mountain.

To look back and acknowledge that I have done something well, that even I can take pride and courage and contentment in my accomplishment(s), well, that’s moving a mountain.

So often the measure of myself is in the void and the absences. What I don’t have, haven’t done, didn’t do today, who I haven’t called, the leads I haven’t followed.

And somehow, I’m finding compassion for myself around all of this. A degree of leniency that I’ve never had for myself. I have never been lenient with myself. (Unless you call all out hedonism leniency, which is really just perfectionism in reverse.)

Somehow.

"Somehow," that’s the word that keeps occurring to me. I don’t know how this shift has happened, and part of me wanted to write all this down so badly yesterday, because I was worried that, like all emotions, it would shift. That my optimism, my pride, my acceptance of myself exactly as I am would vanish by morning.

I’m glad to report that it hasn’t. But, like all new emotions, it’s new. I’m acquainting myself with feeling okay – no, not “okay,” happy with myself.

I’m beginning to see what the fuss is about.

This is partly on the heels of the revelation that people are offering all that they have to me because they value me, and if that is so, then there must be something to value. And beginning to believe that from the inside.

Somehow, the barrier between how you see my and how I see myself is beginning to fade, drop, disappear. Like a lie that is finally exposed to the truth.

When the reality continues to display itself as people valuing and cherishing you, supporting you, and finding you worthy. When the reality continues to prove itself as evidence of a loving world, a world that loves me, eventually, it’s time to believe that theory. The hypothesis becomes proven. How many case studies do you need?

I heard someone say once that once he stopped acting like an asshole, the world stopped treating him like one – “I was the only one I had to convince.”

I am the only one I’ve had to convince of my worth. Everyone else (or the people that matter) has been plenty happy to tell me about it.

But, as with most things, it’s an inside job. And, suddenly, the inside is changing. The curtains being rearranged, walls renovated, the internal landscape reflecting and holding a space for me that mirrors and purports value.

It is because of this new arrangement that all the self-flagellation around “What am I doing with my life? What is my job, career, purpose?” is beginning to fade in importance. I don’t anticipate giving up on who I am or what my passions are; in fact, I think with the new landscape, I will be better set to support myself and my endeavors than ever before.

Something called Optimism. A belief that things are well. That I am well. A belief that what everyone has been saying, what the world has been showing me, is true:

Saggy tushed, dirty dished, socially awkward, voraciously ambitious with “little to show for it,” debt-laden, emotionally luggaged, occasional laugh-snorter, enthusiastic bad dancer, sporadic crafter, swiss-cheese resumed, kitchen crooner, entirely and fully human with every dent, scratch, and lovable imperfect foible – I, Molly Daniels, am worthy.

And my life is being well lived.

"Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

Yesterday, I took down all my magnetic poetry from my refrigerator.

I was sitting at my typical post at my breakfast table, looking across to the wall where collages, and bits of ephemera have been collecting over the time I’ve lived here.

The collages are still generically appropriate, the messaging and messages still appropo, but somehow, it felt like time for change.

After breakfast, I took the collages down. And so, it began.

I spent chunks of time yesterday clearing things out. Kitchen and bathroom cupboards, that junk drawer we all keep, going up and down the dozen steps to the curb, leaving outside all manner of things, from vases I don’t use, to that enormous gold picture frame that some day in some way I thought I’d use.

I put out, finally, that bench, that wonderful blonde wood, woven wicker seated bench which has been resting in my closet for over a year, since there’s no good place for it in my apartment, but I couldn’t bear to part with such a pretty piece of well-made furniture.

But. It’s not doing me any good.

And, the phrase I kept on thinking of as I purged and sorted through my cornucopia of crap was, Freely ye have received, Freely give.

Almost everything I own, furniture-wise, came free, from the sidewalk gods, or friends. I don’t have to believe that I won’t be taken care of in the manner of stuff. There will always be stuff. And I can believe that as I give away that which I really don’t need (I mean, really, a bench in a closet??), I will be given that which I do.

But, moreover, I’ll have the availability to see what it is I really need. To see what I have. To take stock, and inventory of what I have. For the love of god, I do not need 200 paper plates from the parties I used to throw in SF over 3 years ago. I do not need to keep the empty glass jars of peanut butter, because they could be useful for storage or a project.

They’re not. Useful. They’re clutter. And if there’s anything this time in my life is teaching me, it’s that I can be pruned back to the quick, and still be alright.

I don’t need these distractions, clutters, or intrusions. It’s time to get clean.

Part of this surge of energy to do this is I think a paving of the way for the internal work I’m getting set to do, and part of it is in anticipation of a semi-returning to the real world that seems to be getting closer.

I finished my fourth round of chemo on Sunday, and will have my fifth, and god willing final round of chemo next month.

Then. Something else entirely is apt to occur. Something new, something different. Maybe even something the same. Whatever it is, I have no idea, but having all this crap around me doesn’t make me available to it.

I’m beginning to see a new iteration of myself. If it’s not simply wishful thinking. But things like, oh, I think I want to wear clothing that more indicates x, instead of y. Ways that I want to portray myself in the world, that I want my world reflected back to me in my home. I think the clearing out is a way to clear the decks, because there is work to be done, and there is a necessity of space to do it. Just to hold the absence of stuff, to be in the vacuum, like we’re supposed to do in meditation, just be in the emptiness, in what is. Just be in my space without filling it up.

It’s not like I’m a clutterer at all, I just know I have more than I need (honestly, how many half-filled bottles of hand moisturizer does a woman need??), and I know that right now, it feels like I’ve gotten to a place where I’m ready to give away, so that I can be ready to receive.

So much of this time has taught me that there are resources available. That people, supplies, friends, laundry, rides, food, rent are all available to me, if I look and ask and receive them. I don’t need to hold onto the old, things that aren’t quite right because I don’t believe there are things to replace them. Old faded collages are not what I want reflected back to me every morning.

As much as I love the little poems I’d written in magnets, I don’t want the look of clutter it gives right now.

It’s time for a smoothing out of things. For a measure and reassessment. For me to look at who it is I now am, I now am becoming, and allow that to emerge.

I’m getting the chance to know myself and define myself, and I’m pretty interested to see who occurs. 

“How Was Hawaii?”

From this position of retrospect, the best thing about Hawaii has been how it has allowed me to face this week of chemotherapy differently from all the other rounds.

Prior to the trip, and the option of the trip, I felt in a holding cell, being shuttled between getting better enough to get sick enough to get better. A constant revolving door of timing to be let in and out of a hospital room.

What going to Hawaii did was to remove me entirely from that zone, that waiting, holding, grey, colorless, lifeless zone. I took a vacation from cancer.

Part of how this is showing up currently, and making my life easier, is that I have very real, and very current memories of incredible moments and times. Colorful, impulsive, whimsical moments to reach into my recent memory and hold for a moment of comfort and joy. It seems like even my dreams have been re-infused.

Having to slather sunblock only on my left arm, my driving arm, so that I didn’t end up with a severe trucker’s tan. The curve of a pair of whales backs as they breached up for air, spouting mist.

A stream with a water hole, and two dudes swimming in it, waving at me. The view from the top (or bottom) of anywhere. Mosquito bites! The cognitive dissonance of standing in an Oakland chill and scratching mosquito bites acquired in Hawaii! Physical proof that I was there, that I experienced, that I was in my body.

I feel recharged from that trip. No matter what my exact experience of it was.

When people have asked me how it was, I’ve said that the most important thing, I think, is that I let myself go at all – it’s not the details of the trip, which ranged emotionally from cranky to sobbing grief to awestruck to serene. (perhaps in that order.)

That I let myself go at all was a win for me. For someone who never lets herself do much of anything that sounds like or is fun.

The trip did range all those emotions. The following story I tell most is exemplary of much of my mind state:

It was about the 4^th day on the island, and I still hadn’t simply sat on a beach. I’d been shuttled around to see a lot of things, and I drove down a tortourous, sodden drive out to the far end of the island, but as far as sitting and lavishing in the sunshine? Not yet.

So, I finally went to the beach. I was heading back to the house from that drive, the sun was heading down toward the ocean, and I couldn’t decide if I should go home, or go to the beach. I passed off-ramp after off-ramp, telling myself I should go home, rest, change, shower. And every off-ramp, I found myself disappointed I didn’t just take it. Who cares I’m not changed in a bathing suit – DO SOMETHING.

So, I did. I pulled off, finally, at a strip-mall, and changed into a bathing suit in the car, and turned around, and drove back to the beach.

I packed my little sack, and made my way to the sand, the long flesh-colored sand, the long dark-blue water. I opened my towel, and I laid down.

I wonder if I should get a book.

I think I should get a book. It’s boring just sitting here doing nothing.

How long have I had my back exposed to the sun? Is it time to flip over yet? Am I tan yet?

How much sunscreen should I put on? I want a tan, but duh, I don’t want cancer.

Do you think there’s time to drive to Barnes&Noble and back and still get some sun?

Can’t you just sit here and appreciate the weather? Can’t I just be where I’m at? Listening to the waves, soaking in the healing rays?

Sure, okay, breathe in, listen, be still, be where I am, don’t think I need the moment to be different. Be where I’m at. Be present …

I think I should get a book.

:D AND THAT’S HOW MY BRAIN WORKS! Thank you very much, ladies and gentleman, for attending today’s round of, How can Molly fuck herself up! Well done to all, let’s do it again tomorrow.

So, needless to say, it took me a long time to simply settle into being there. My brain was active for a lot of the trip, and that was alright; I tried to be as patient with it as I could.

I took little notes of my impressions, ones that are “poetic” and descriptive. I occasionally let myself pull off the highway to look at things, or stop in a store just because. I let it be okay to not buy jewelry that I really didn’t need, even though it was pretty, and I bought a lot of little art pieces for myself and friends to whom I’m truly indebted.

I wandered in a SUN DRESS and flip-flops around town, and even spent a few minutes hat-less, letting my chemo-hair get some fresh air.

I ate a passion-fruit right off a tree in the yard, having asked my hosts how to eat one.

I cooked my daily breakfast of eggs, and had absolutely nasty caffeine-withdrawal mornings.

I ordered a "POG," which is a passion, orange, guava juice. And I loved it.

I just leaned right over the steering wheel to watch a rainbow for a while, and learned from a slightly drunken Torontan, who'd wandered down the beach with a Hilton wrist-band, that the French word for rainbow translates as Arc in the Sky.

I saw bananas growing upsidedown, like cheeky, “how do you know how things are supposed to grow” teachers.

  

I breathed. I stood on the outcroppings of things, in the woods of things, on the streets of things, and I breathed.

As I breathe now, the recycled air that pushes continually into this cheerless room, I remember exactly what it was like to lie naked on a guest bed in Maui, watching jungle-like plants dance exultant in a gathering tropical storm.

Joy Is Not An Afterthought

An idea that was presented this weekend at my meditation retreat is that Joy is just like any other form of sustenance. As we need food to maintain our body, we need Joy to maintain our soul.

Joy isn’t a bi-product, a dessert, a reward; it is (or can be) the mode from which we live first. Like breakfast as the most important meal of the day, so can Joy be as important.

A friend recently wrote to me that most people don’t get to see the kind of love that people have for them, the kind of support and outpouring that I’ve had during this time of illness. Someone else told me yesterday, after visiting through a few hours of revolving door visitors that I am “pop-U-lar!”

I began to say to him that I simply have good people in my life, that they’re just doing their jobs as good people, good, service-oriented folk. But, I stopped myself.

It is true. Not everyone has this kind of support, the kind of support that I’ve gotten from the beginning of this ordeal, and I have to take a step back and acknowledge that this is for me. That it isn’t everyone receiving this (although, they could, potentially), but that perhaps I have a role in what I am being given and am receiving.

I say all this in processing one of the meditations we did this weekend. I’ve talked about this one here before; it’s called The Jewel Tree of Tibet meditation, and the guided meditation basically leads you to a tree where all the folks and teachers and ancestors and wise people sit in a tree and focus all their love and light and support toward you, filling you up with their joy that you exist, that you are here.

I’ve had trouble with this meditation before.

There is a point after this infusion of light from those folks during which we turn and recognize all these other folks around us, from friends, to strangers, to people we have difficult relationships with, and we become a channel from the light on the tree outward and into these folks.

Before, in the past, I’ve completely rejected the light that comes toward me. F' you, take your light elsewhere, I don’t trust it, don’t know what to do with it, you can have it.

But, I will certainly turn around and help to feed those behind me from my limited, finite bucket of power and love, etc. Sure, I have no problem giving to you, but you cannot give to me.

So, this weekend, I told the facilitator that I had problems with this meditation, and she invited me to just push into the discomfort, but not to push too hard, like holding a yoga pose far enough to stretch, but not so far as to pull something.

So, okay. Fine. I’ll try. And I did. I let all that muck that I seen as love and support come toward me. I sat in its path and light as someone being force-fed pureed vegetables. Yech, but okay, fine. It was emotional. It was too much. I still don’t know what to do with it. I'm overwhelmed by it, how much love there is.

But. I sat with it, And now I have to turn around and give it to someone else? What if there isn’t enough? I’m just getting used to holding it, and you want me to give it away? I don’t think I can do that.

After the meditation, I shared about my experience, and the facilitator asked me which she felt was the most wise place for me to focus right now – on the receiving, or on the giving. I said the receiving (and then questioned if that was the “right” thing to say!). But I think it is, for me, for right now. I have the most awful time in recognizing the things that are coming to me.

I was reflecting this morning about how singularly focused I have been in my life about making things happen my way, or how I think they should be. Focused so much on work-a-day, paycheck-to-paycheck, that I have had ZERO room for abundance, for joy, for relaxation.

I have been absolutely, without a doubt, plucked from my normal life. I have been allowed for the first time to let the blinders fall away, and what I see is glorious and new. New, as a little frightening, and yet, new as plain and simple WOW.

Wow, someone brought me a fuzzy blanket on my first day in the hospital.

Wow, my landlord is waiving my rent while I get better.

Wow, someone gifted me a flight to Hawaii.

Wow, a friend brought me healthy food to eat.

Wow, a friend is paying my cell phone bill while I’m not working.

Wow, someone connected me with a professional possibility.

Wow, someone is lending me a real piano keyboard.

Wow, all the outpouring of cards, gifts, love, support.

Where has all of this been??

It’s been right here. ALL A-FUCKING-LONG.

It’s all been here, all along. But I have been so centered on what I think, on what I need to do, on doing it by myself, that I’ve missed the whole thing.

Does one have to have cancer to recognize all this support that may have been present the whole time? I hope not – otherwise things’ll get pretty back-to-the-old when this is all over.

Can I hold the space for the possibility that all this was available all along, and that means that it will be available going forward? It may not look the same way; my needs with be different, but it will be there, if I let it.

Allowing help, allowing love, allowing the reception of the goodness of the universe was as alien to my family growing up as escargot is to … a community that doesn’t eat escargot.

I learned that vulnerability was hidden away, or masked by rage. I learned that you had to figure things out on your own, no one was available to help, and there was no one to ask. There weren’t things coming toward you that were good; you worked and made it happen, and if it didn’t happen, tough shit. That’s life, you be happy with what you wrench out of the world.

Many of us are modeled this way of living and thinking in the world. A way which tells us we are separate, and must exist by what we make happen.

I am learning how far off base that lesson was. (Not to criticize, just to acknowledge.) I am acknowledging and learning something much, much different lately.

Help is always available. Beyond the bounds of what I think is possible.

I would never have imagined the love that people are offering me. I would never have let myself be vulnerable enough to see or need it.

Cancer, as teacher. Cancer, as humbler. Cancer, as changing my fucking life. 

Accomplishy.

For someone relatively confined to a 10x10 foot space, I’ve been remarkably accomplishy today.

For one, a friend of mine from school came by to chat and catch up, but, deliciously, we also began to talk about and exchange writing. She’s submitting an essay to a contest, and had sent it to me and to the third person in our unofficial writing group the three of us formed after graduation, while each in the, How do you balance life and writing? phase of post-grad.

The phase each of us are still in. Today, she and I got the chance to talk like writers again; it was noticeable to me how we each perked up while talking about it, talking about how our “real” life becomes the focus, and the writerly mantle and life becomes an afterthought, or simply a memory.

Her coming by today helped me to remember how much I love talking about this; reading others’ work, commenting, helping one another to make it better, to pull the best out of it, push it further, where it wants to be. There’s a collaboration that makes two minds greater than one, even though writing can be such a solitary endeavor.

I told her that she reminded me that in December, I’d begun finally writing this essay I’ve been carrying around in the wheeley cart that is my mind for years. I told her that I stalled out on it, wasn’t sure how to hold it and move forward with it. She said she’d love to read it; we talked about how with our little group, we know that we’re not sending polished work, but simply what we’ve got, and the honesty, bravery, and humility that takes to allow each other – the trust, really – to let one another read our unvarnished work.

So, I sent it, and she read it. Already. Commented, already, and sent her comments back to me, … already. It seems that there really is something there, and she gave me a wonderful idea for how to frame this story/essay I want to tell. It seems so obvious sometimes, we’d said to each other, that we’d never thought to change or frame or add what the other suggested – but, if we’d thought of it ourselves, we wouldn’t need each other.

It just reinforced for me, the idea of community, the need for one another, to help and support each other, just by saying yes. Yes, I’d love to read it; Yes, I’m available for feedback. Yes, I support you in your endeavor of sending your work into the world.

Above all that I got out of my schooling, was the notion that a writing community is imperative. Writing for me had been such a silent, isolated, solitary work, and sure, sometimes in school, you’re presented with a classroom of folks who don’t “get it,” or whose work you don’t “get,” but you’re willing to talk about it – to be opened by it.

In the brief visit with a friend of mine, I was reopened to those conversations, that angle of my brain, that way of tilting my head to look at the world.

Another event of today was my calling to follow up with a woman who I’d been referred to professionally. In my period of disability (aka, not working), I’ve found that I’d like to actually DO stuff; do something that makes me feel I can contribute to the world. And, ultimately, I realized that because I don’t have the pressure of worrying about rent and paycheck-to-paycheck right now, I can really look to do anything I want with my time.

Mainly, I mean to say that I have the chance to be the intern, or part-time, or virtual worker that I haven’t had the financial space to be in the past.

When I was unemployed over this summer after graduation, looking for word in Arts Marketing and/or arts education, I found that my resume really didn’t reflect the skills that people were looking for. I certainly have the verve and the enthusiasm for this work – I think there is little more important than helping people to access their creative center, whatever that looks like to them, and personally, I think I’m a pretty good schmoozer.

So, when I was contacted by an old instructor of mine from school after she’d found out I had cancer, I replied with my thanks for her kindness, and inquired if she needed any help with her literary magazine, a virtual assistant perhaps (since obviously, I’m not commute-able). An intern, sort of, a part-time helper, what can I do, how can I keep my feet in the waters of creative community; how can I put something creative on my resume, use the skills I have, gain the ones I need.

She thought on it, and put me in touch, just last week with a friend of hers, who is a private practitioner of expressive arts therapy, an artist herself, and a member of the spiritual community. Basically, our values and beliefs align entirely.

I called her today for the first time (can I admit, that out of my fear, I ate half the bag of dark-chocolate-covered pomegranate seeds first?). We spoke for nearly an hour. She told me how she was looking to launch, expand, enlarge, and I was honest with her that many of the practical things she was looking for (specific programs, etc.) I don’t have experience in, but want the experience in. That it is precisely what has kept me from the jobs (I think) I want in the past.

I was honest and started to say maybe she wants someone who’s a little more up to speed, able to jump on the ball immediately. But she stopped me. She said, actually, as she’s just formulating this all herself, maybe we can work something out while I come up to speed. That we can use each other to build it out, fill it out, steer as we sail. Basically … paying me to learn skills I want to learn… which, isn’t that what “work” is supposed to be anyway????

So, I’m going to send her my resume and a reference, and we’re both going to sit on it for a week and “see what blossoms,” but this could be a really great thing for me – and for her. And if nothing else, I reached out, put myself and my skills and my honesty out there, and I met a woman who seems to be a light in this world.

Not. Bad.

Lastly, I heard back from both depth hypnosis practitioners I contacted last night, and will be making an appointment with one when she returns at the end of the month. Accomplishy, indeed.

Mouse or Monster?

If a tan falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to see it…

I swear, I’m tan. But in the bundled-up hoodies, hats, and gloves, you may never know it. I change so quickly from pajamas into outfits, that even I have a hard time noticing! So I have occasionally flashed my belly at myself in the mirror just to confirm it ;)

I’m getting mentally and physically prepared to go back into the hospital tonight for Chemo Round 4 out of 5. This means a week of inpatient hospital stay, a week of very interrupted sleep. As the saying goes, The hospital is no place for a sick person.

That said, how grateful am I to have the health care and coverage that I do. Infinitely. The care that I’ve gotten has been stellar, even when they wake me at 1am to take my blood pressure.

As to the retreat. Well, unsurprisingly, I’ve been asked to work on what I was asked to work on last year -- and didn't. Asked to work on that which I don’t really want to, haven’t really wanted to, and which has enabled and allowed me to stay stuck. Cancer, the disease of stuckness, perhaps.

Last year, it was indicated that in order to move forward in my life, I need to address my sexual trauma. Now, who will willingly walk into that miasma?

Unless they have to.

Unless they have cancer, the ticking clock that says, Lady, deal with this now, because life is short.

Some of what keeps me so quiet and averse to working on or through this particular slice of experience is that I quantify my trauma as not that severe, not that bad, not as bad as plenty I’ve heard, so why talk about it, address it, voice it, validate it?  There are plenty of women (and men) who have far worse stuff to parse through, so why should I take any time to address my own?

It’s like saying, I don’t need to eat because there are people who are hungrier than me. – That doesn’t really compute, does it.

I need to eat, regardless. And I need to work through this regardless, even though I feel ashamed that it’s “not big enough” trauma. It’s so ridiculous, how my brain concocts ways to keep me stuck.

I had some intense meditation experiences this weekend at the retreat. I won’t recount them, but I will say that I was presented very visually and viscerally with what my aversion to this work has done to me emotionally; what the part of me looks like that has been cut off, that I have cut off. It’s scary, honestly. How deprived and deranged that part of me, my sexuality, my femininity has become. How unreachable she has become.

When we think about sexuality, we can think about creativity. About that same center as bringing forth Life in all its manifestations. It’s not just about sex, about procreation – it’s about creation in all its forms. It’s about, to me, confidence, competence, adventure, expression. Manifestation.

With this part of me so disconnected, so alienated, it isn’t a wonder that I find my life stuck, myself stuck. To consider the “false start at life,” the “failure to launch” in which I seem to find myself.

I don’t want to look at this, this accumulation of years of negative experiences around sex and sexuality. It’s frightening. It feels like it’s bigger than I even know, and so I’m terrified to even lift the lid. So, some of what I did this weekend was to seek and find help, an internal guide that can and will help me to navigate these waters. Also -- back on earth! -- a friend at the retreat suggested some human resources that I will follow up on. So, I’m gathering the internal and the external support.

I do have the experience of feeling frightened of something, of something I think is so big, and it turns out, on investigation, on finally walking into it, that it is not so scary at all. That it is just the shadow cast by a mouse. Perhaps this will end up like that, but I won’t know unless I begin.

I don’t feel the desire to begin. And I may never. But, I must. There is an imperative now that there was not last year, and so, I will begin anyway. Because mouse or monster, I don’t need to be living like this. 

OGG to OAK

I have White Snake’s lovely 80s hit running through my head as I click, Open > New Document: “Here I go again on my own, goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known.”

I’m home. I back, on my couch in Oakland, with my space heater, sweater, sweatshirt, two throw blankets and a mug of hot tea. Back to my keyboard, back to you, to my friends.

It only took the full 10 days I was there, but I finally achieved serenity while in Hawaii. Yesterday. (Which, with my red-eye flight and layover, seems both farther and closer than one whole day ago.)

I was riding the ferry from the island of Lanai back to Maui after a day spent with my host, a housemate, and a couple, my host’s friends and natives of Lanai, exploring the island (the secluded ShipWreck beach, their home where a horned chameleon slowly trailed his way along their wooden fence, the spectacular view and lunch at the chi chi golf course). On the ferry back, it wasn’t the deep blue blue of the ocean, or the humpback whale tails we spotted as two dove for deeper water, or the sunshine that rendered the wind mild as a breeze – it was the simplicity, for me, of breathing without holding my breath. Without holding my belly. Breathing in fully the sea air, riding the grade and fall of the ship with loose knees and loose hands, closing my eyes, and finally, finally, not being anywhere else except for where I was; not wishing anything at all were different around or within me.

On the undulating deck of a tourist ferry, I found stillness.

The only thing that has made my reentry to this side of the Pacific palatable is that tomorrow morning, I head on my annual women’s retreat. With all the sturm und drang of, Retreat: yes or no; Hawaii: yes or no, I now feel it couldn’t have worked out more perfectly. The 10 days as prep for the retreat. Luckily, I don’t and didn’t feel a massive “I don’t want to go back” as I (yes, reluctantly) packed yesterday, because I knew and know that it means that I get to go on my retreat, and touch down even further. To be in a very different climate doing essentially the same thing – trying to get quiet, and find stillness.

And maybe even find guidance, but I suppose that’s just more of my expectations, and my relentless desire to feel different or better or know more or do more. I may get nothing; no guidance. I may simply get the opportunity to sit with a group of women in the hills of Napa and try to get some quiet between my ears and full breaths in my lungs, simply sit with them during our various modes of inner seeking and get repetition of things I’ve already heard.

Because, I did not, as was perhaps wanted/expected, get some stroke of brilliance for how to change my life, to turn around my “false start at life,” my “failure to launch” while I sat on a beach in a tropical locale. So, why should I get or expect one when sitting in a redwood circle around a bonfire? (Although, perhaps the brilliance is simply experiencing those moments themselves.)

I was talking with my host last night before she dropped me for my midnight flight near the north shore of Maui. We sat in a diner eating a combination of rueful snack objects not found on the mainland. And I told her how I’m trying to extricate my belief system from a Higher Power that I interpret as “You do good, you get good; you do bad, you get bad.” That I want to begin to associate a higher power more with the simple serenity I get when I touch into meditation, or like that moment on the ferry boat. Just calm. Just stillness.

But, I told her, this "it just is"ness isn’t necessarily comforting; that isn’t its point, as far as I can tell or “figure out” from my Buddhist-esque readings. The point, as I interpret it, is more to just be with what is; that’s the whole essence; that’s the end result. There isn’t a warm shawl of comfort to throw around your shoulders, telling you it’ll be alright.

As Pema put it, rather tongue-in-cheekily, we’d be better off with the catch phrase “Abandon Hope,” rather than, “It’ll be alright,” as the latter attempts to put us somewhere else, the future, the idea that in the future, the moment will be better. “Abandon Hope,” she says, means to encourage us to stop thinking that something in the future will come along to change how we feel or change the moment into something different – that hope takes us out of the current moment. And so, instead, abandon it, and abandon yourself to what is.

Well, this isn’t very comforting, is it?

Or, is it?

I don’t know yet.

But, my companion at the diner asked me, since my “higher power” is always and only of my own conception anyway, why not make it a comforting one? … *brain crack* Uhh. … Then aren’t I back to where I was before? Believing something will come along to make me “feel better?” when really I just need to be simply feeling?

Ack, said my brain. And, in full acknowledgement, my brain is not really the organ to be attempting to parse out spiritual matters. It is always bound to get wound in knots.

So, although I may not have firm expectations that I will be enlightened, or even mini-lightened, on this weekend’s retreat, I do expect that I will share some about my bardo, my transition, this liminal space, and I do hope (ha! am I allowed to use that word?!) that I can get some feedback or insight from other women whom I trust and love.

Most people dread coming back from vacation, because it means work on Monday. For me, it means Round 4 chemo on Monday. And I suppose, that “just is” too.

“Here I go again,” but perhaps not on my own.

Art and the Argentinian

Let me say first, I have finally accomplished what I came here to do: I have achhiieevd sunburn.

Also, let me say, that i am using the couch surfer's wwirrrreless keyboard, hooked up to my phone, so may any mi8stakes of spellling be forgiven.

That nall said, i have to ay that my brain has taken this full entire wek to even BEGIN to shut off. I went to the beach for the first time on sunday afternoon, for a very bief, before dark OH PLEAE LET ME GET TO THE BEACH MOMENT, and as i laid there in the final hours of sunlight, I had what shouldn't surpirse any of us -- thoughts. Thinking, a constant running chatter, that also now included Pema chodron telling me that it was okay that i was having thoughts and to not judge the thoughtmaker or the acknolwdger of the thoughmakings... it got very loud and vry confusing in my brain An this is supposed to be VACATION! i kept telling ti.

My brain does not know what a vacation is. What it knows is that there was a brief pause in"doing stuff", and so let's fill it with chatter. Mh, I'm not surprised, and c'et la vie, i take myself whrever I go, doln't I?

But, finally, and for a few moments, there was stillness, or even, ha! laughter! or even, can it be? joy. A few moments when I would even call it joy

The first few days I was here, I was shuttled around by my host family, which was great, because I got to see things that I wouldn't ordinarily on my own, like their neice's 30th birthday party, but, i really felt the need to be out on my own - there is a lot of small talk involved whn you're withother people, especially people you don't knw - surprise - and, really, that doesn't feel very relaxing to me, howevr wondeful they are, and, these folks are.

So on Friday I rented a car, and set out to Hana, on the complete opposite side of the island, the last "hawaiian" place on the iland, so it was billd. Oy. What a siaster. It was raining to hard, and the drive is like Route one, pacific coast highway, but worse, because of the thick jungle. plus, i was alone with myself, which as i've said, is a little like being alone with a crazy person. i'd anted to go on that ride, drive, in order to have silence, pace, to get out of my own way, and go somewhr beautiful, and it wasn't like that at all. By the time I got to Hana, five hours of teacherous road later, it was grey, torential, windy, and cold. SSo much for hawaii, eh?

(i promise, I get to some gratitude!)

i rented a room in what was a little like a cros between a hostel and a motel, and set everything down, just as it was turning dark outside. i went downstairs to the kitchen to heat up some wter for tea, and met two nice couples, one from california, older, one from new york, younger. we ehchanged pleasantries,shared about the horrors of the drive, and hat we were likely to do when there. it was nice. it felt cocooned, and safe. safe in from th storm, safe, talking to other people, and sharing stories. warm for the night.

i went back up to my room, and took out some of the art supplies i'd brought with me on the trip, and drew and colored a postcard to send to a friend. i felt serene, finally. it was warm, uit, i was engaged in doing somthing i loed. really, it didn't matter where i wouldn have been at that point. hawii, or oakland, or whreveet, would have been the same. i was finally uiet in my head.

there's more to say about the reest of the trip, but that'll do for now.

as to the title of this blog, i left an art gallry in paia this afternoon, after a full and relatively (RELATIVELY) brain free day. i'd wandered in, attracted by this large piece of abstract work, all copper and bronze and then streaks of neon that should render the whle thing a "no," but instead, make it just right. All these lines, lik a foret, vertical stripes, thick, malleable, slops of acrylic. i sat on the bench in front of this piece, vaguely hearinga coupl talk to the gallery manager. they and i conversed a bit about th pieces, and then they left, and i was left to chat with the gallery owner (i later found out). an argentinian.

and i won't bore you with the chrge of flirting that cut an undercurent below the chat about art marketing and distraction/creation. but, i will tell you that it was tjere. and it was good.

so when i left the shop as he took a call, and handed me his personal card, me, with th sunburned legs, and the wisps of baby hair peeking out from under my bandana, i was smiling one of those mona ilsa smiles, one of those contented, nobody can fuck with thi, becauseit just IS smiles, I askd myself, is it the art, or the argentinian? ;)

Cloudy, with a Chance of Rainbows.

So, let's see how long a blog I can write using my smart phone before it gets too tedious!

Things here in Hawaii are awesome, but, it is not sunny. Not yet at least! My host family is super sweet and helpful, and I've basically been tagging along with them for the past few days, or allowed myself to be scooped up and taken along with friends.

The first moment I arrived here -- I've been having all these quasi-flashbacks to when I lived in South Korea, but from there it was so easy to plane-hop to a Pacific Rim/Southeast Asian country. One year I went with a newbie to Korea, and so a near-stranger to me, to Indonesia.

The guy I was dating at the time, his great aunt lived in Indonesia, outside Jakarta (this was not a cool Bali surf trip), and was, and Erich described her, the little old lady who lived in a zoo ;) And she really was. She lived in the orangutan exhibit/village INSIDE the zoo! Se my new friend Neil & I were set up with the connection, and off we went.

She was something else- a slightly dotty, but immensely sweet, and obviously intelligent very old woman- she spoke German, her native language. Apparently, she & her German husband had moved to Indonesia fifty years prior to help rehabilitate the orangutans that had been abused or illegally sold and malnourished, etc., but nearly as soon as they arrived, her husband died. And so she stayed, and stays, living within the bounds of the zoo, in a small very quaint house, at which she served us tea and invited us to play with and meet her charges, which also included one mildly deluded parrot who'd plucked all his feathers...

...Anyway, why am I reminded of all that? Well, easily. This is just another south pacific country, basically. The humidity, the enormous leafy plants, the lax sense of time. My hostess said the only thing that keeps Hawaii from being just another third world country is the U.S. government: 1/3rd works for the government, 1/3rd for the army, and then the last third works to support the infrastructure all that creates.

But, back to the moment I arrived thing; I was so sharply reminded of the trip I took on my way home from Korea after two years of teaching. My brother was studying abroad in Sydney, and a co-teacher had just moved to Brisbane in Australia. So I took a detour. I flew down to Cairns on the northern coast of Australia to go see the coral reef, before heading to see those I knew elsewhere on the island. When I got the plane, I exited right into the outdoors - no enclosed walk through a large gate area, just right outside. Where I had left, it had been snowing; this was February after all.

And I walked outside, and I was swept up and into the dense warmth of the air, and greeted by large, waving green plants and the tops of palms in an endless, massive sky.

The moment was echoed when I arrived here, straight into the warm healing arms of Maui.