I'm here

Feeling better

Xmas shopping 

Finalized grades for my class - ALL DONE. I'm done out off null 

You know what's weird? I'm unemployed unconnected unexpected unanticipated unplanned. As of 12:16 pm today when I typed on my 21 student final grades to the great computer brain in the St. Edwards sky I became untethered unencumbered and thoroughly unremarkable to the university where I have pledged my love. I am in love with my leafy hilly topped university even if they only like me. We sort of broke up - or taking a break - till the fall. I feel aimless and sad not to be looking forward to a Spring class of 22 new and returning students whose minds I could warp and freak out and blow - those were always my goals.

I'm on day 11 or so of my chemo cycle three and feeling pretty ok. I'm getting the hang of this a little but don't enjoy the skill or knowledge. Feel about 80%. Leaning in to the holidays and loving them. Shove all of your ornaments and cookies and shopping crowds at me while I wrap and gift and sing all at once - I want it all all at once. I gorge while I can and will not complain again. Those unsick are truly the gifted. I take it in delicious fragments.

When I feel my most sick (days 2-10 of the toxic-stream body ruination infusion) I feel removed from life. My bathrobe is not my own and it feels old and scuddy and smells chlorine inside out. I am alone and there is no other person on the street or in my house or if I see one it's not real. I cannot relate to my human family or community and only feel a vague string back to some ancestral hearth embodied by a dying death rattling elder. I'm unrelated to my home or my surroundings and when I open a window things could suck out as on a plane, roughing up backwards over my head. It wouldn't hurt, it would be ok. That's how not I am there. I am not there or of the scene. I'm only alone inside a gravity pulled space ship - close and nonoriented claustrophobic inward spinning ship - unable to communicate with or touch the outer world. The poison obliterates not just me, but you too. You're not there then. I'm sorry. You so rotate back as Saturm turns me back slowly from stone to human. I welcome you. Now I realize I missed you.

Cyclicalness is nature but this is not. This cycle has it's death and rebirth yes, but no fertility or sexuality and in that way it's terrible in its falseness. It's an oncological  human construct.

Annabelle and Dave December 22

Christmas December 25

Chemo #4 December 26

So happy Annabelle will be with me

And so sorry 

Read a wonderful story today in The Best Short Stories 2013 called "Bravery" by Charles Baxter, (writer I love),

that poses a good question near the end:

What will you do with another day?