What Emerges

I am not going to write a post about spring. No metaphors of emergence and renewal couched in the language of bursting blossoms shall issue from my keyboard. (Julian Jaynes argues that all language is metaphor, which makes this whole thing very difficult, but work with me).

Last week I went to an arcade. I went to an arcade, mini-golf, go-kart fun park, to be exact. It was the middle of a weekday that threatened rain, and was not particularly crowded. At noon, I drove over to a strip mall to eat a bowl of soup. I even had half a glass of wine with dinner (don't tell Dr. Alyea!). I was in South Carolina, where there is much in full flower and...d'oh! Anyway.

I was not wearing gloves. 

I was not wearing a mask.

I was not reading the labels and harassing the staff about every ingredient in the soup.

I was not tired, or wired, or sore, or hungry.

I was...fine. Normal. Totally normal. Normal like other people think of normal.

Last year in mid-April I was planning to begin my transplant conditioning in May. My friend Dave had just died from complications related to leukemia post-transplant. My donor had not yet suffered the injury that would put me through another round of consolidation chemo that would damage my heart and lungs and potentially render me unfit for treatment. The weather was, as now, just starting to get warm, and I was ferociously recovering from my first two rounds of treatment; attempting to gain weight and muscle mass, bolster my liver and kidneys and immune system, find my center, clear my mind.


I was not going to arcades.


Everyone tells you, everyone knows, that life is just a series of moments. It is so very easy to forget that, though. Perhaps some of my decisions seem strange from some perspectives; they are certainly not staid and conservative choices. I plan to live a very, very long time, but every chance I get to do better right now, to be more connected to the people in my life and less concerned with whether it matters that Lysander is eating nothing but hotdogs or Wallace is staying up all night reading Calvin and Hobbes, is a chance I have to take.


My thyroid is acting up, I guess I have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis now; an auto-immune disorder in which the thyroid under-performs and my immune system attacks the gland. When the doctors told me that initially I was very frustrated. I wanted to be on a linear path to complete health. What is complete health, though? Was I completely healthy in my youth, in my twenties, when I didn't have what I have now? I may have been through cancer and ancillary entertainment since then, but my life is so rich, and the terrain of my body is made of wisdom and endurance borne of blood and sweat and tears. I have never been so healthy, so strong, so at home.


Look backwards. Go be in those places in your memory, and enjoy them, and relive them. But don't ever regret the loss of them, for they are still there, and what is happening now is worth living. Find a Go-Kart track.

 (Check out my renewed daily documentation project over at My Time Lapse Life)

Fear Factor

You know the first part of the story: I was young and strong and I got cancer and it is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

You might not know the next part, and the reason it has been silent on the blog for so long: Right after I was confirmed as being in full remission, we bought a thirty-seven foot sailboat.

She's exactly the boat we dreamed about as we sat in the sun on Saturday mornings and spilled coffee on the map of where we now live. We've been quietly preparing her to carry us from Maine to North Carolina to live aboard for the winter. What comes next is uncertain, but it is unlikely to be conventional. (Since I couldn't talk about it publicly, and I can't be insincere about what is important in my life, I couldn't write for a while).

I'm excited. I'm ecstatic. And I'm definitely scared.

I used to think I could rationalize my fears away; I would confront my anxiety with a host of reasons for its cosmic insignificance. Then it would continue to sit and smirk in a corner of my mind, enlarged and empowered by my efforts to banish it. Then one day I sat down across from my own mortality, and I looked at my hand, and I had nothing to bid. I was scared. I was really fucking scared. I was so scared that I had to admit it, admit that I was afraid to die and without any argument for why I wasn't going to.

Then a strange thing happened: the anxiety went away, and my course of action was clear. The unknown was still there, the source of the fear, but the fear itself had no power. I didn't feel afraid anymore.

Sometimes I leave the kitchen a mess all day. I know that it has to get cleaned, and so it will. But that letter might not get written, or that call not get made, or that game not get played. I'm going to wake up in the morning and take breaths, one after another, all day, no matter what happens. Sometimes I'm going to be scared, and that's just one of many things that might happen. Security is illusory. So I'm getting on that boat, and charging into the unknown, because the fear wins only when I pretend it's not there. In adventure, the payoff is proportional to the risks.

Of course, I'll have to eat. Two of my favorite recipes are adapted very closely from these links, both grain- and nut-free: Fluffy Coconut Blueberry Pancakes, (I substitute maple syrup for honey and add a cup of blueberries. If you increase this recipe, increase the eggs by a factor of at least 1.5x, so in doubling it you will need ten eggs, rather than eight) and Sweet Potato Fish Chowder (I omit the bacon because my husband doesn't eat pork, and instead of using broth I add a T of tomato paste to the water. I only find it necessary to use a cup, rather than a pint, of cream).