My Little Monster

The artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1755-1851) was a gifted badass. Painter, printmaker, water-colourist, sketcher—he became a student at the prestigious Royal Academy in London when he was just fourteen. He got famous as an artist while he was still a young man, made tons of art and lots of money (with his art, yes, but also by investing in real estate and other schemes). He pissed off his rivals, had a couple of scandalous love affairs, traveled, and sketched, and painted, and traveled, and sketched, and painted some more, then died peacefully, asleep in his own bed. 

Turner was dubbed Prince of the Rocks for the dramatic, dynamic way he painted landscapes (and seascapes). He most certainly captured the sublime in his towering alpine cliffs, or in the towering ocean waves that seem to bound off the canvas. You can practically hear the ocean crashing into the rocks. I can get lost in his paintings for days.

Fishermen at Sea,  by JMW Turner

That's just what I did this past summer, when the Frist Art Museum here in Nashville finally re-opened for socially-distanced, masked patrons. The Turner exhibition had been held over from spring, with many pieces on loan from the Tate in London. I went to see the show twice, and each time I walked each of the galleries twice, doubling back to look again at a favorite, or just to marvel at something I hadn't seen—really seen—the first time through. Honestly, there could never be enough time to truly see everything in all those paintings. 

The exhibit included many famous works—endless mountains and waves, monumental oil paintings, sweet watercolors, open sketchbooks. It was overwhelming. But during both visits my mind fastened on an unfinished painting that looks more like a work of abstract expressionism than it does a Romantic seascape. The canvas is covered in an ethereal, swirling yellow; there's some pink, some grey-blue, some red and orange, and it's just, well, beautifully misty and sunny at once. 

JMW Turner's Sunrise with Sea Monsters

"Turner seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and so airy," wrote his contemporary, John Constable (according to the curator's notes). 

And nowhere was that more evident than in Turner's Sunrise with Sea Monsters, with its yellow-pink-grey-blue-red-orange "tinted steam," and, at the bottom, some dark swirls just beginning to look like fish or whales. Or the face of an underwater dragon. 

No one seems to know for sure what Turner had planned for this canvas. I'm fine with not knowing. I like it the way it is. An unfinished canvas is so very human, a perpetual work in progress.

I also love this painting because, on any given day, who doesn't have some little monster tucked away in the bottom of their psyche? Some kind of worry or long-carried grief. Some obsession. 

Or some physical malady, perhaps, quiescent for now. 

Maybe, like...oh...I dunno...late stage cancer? Because when you live in Cancerland, sometimes even in the most escapist of Romantic painters, you still see the work through the lens of your cancer. Because once you have cancer, or even have had cancer, sometimes it's hard not to make everything a fucking metaphor for your fucking cancer. 

Like maybe you're floating your little boat in the night through the rocks of the Cancerland Sea, grieving yet another recent loss of a lovely friend to the disease, or even the death of an acquaintance, a cancer compadre you "knew" on Facebook (both of which happened in the last few weeks). And you're afraid, very afraid of your little dinghy being smashed to pieces, of the sharks circling. 

But then, you step into another painting, and just like that, it's morning. All around you there's light. The rocks and the monsters are still there, of course. But now so is this swirling, misty yellow-grey-pink-blue-red-orange light, wrapping you in a kind of benediction. Like every sunrise inviting you (and your little monster) toward it, through the rocks and mist, into another imperfect day of an unfinished life in your imperfect, dynamic body. And you are grateful.

This Is Just To Say

They have taken 

the scans
that were in
my care plan

and which
I was certainly
dreading
for weeks now

But bless me
they were amazing
so clear
and so NED.


Thanks to physician-poet William Carlos Williams (pictured here) for creating Every Poetry Teacher's classroom dream prompt for the instruction of imagery. And thanks to my care team at Tennessee Oncology, and to cancer researchers everywhere doing REAL SCIENCE right now, even in a social climate currently hostile to it.

For those who don't know it, here's a link to the WCW poem that inspired mine: This Is Just to Say

And, for those readers who'd like to know more about Williams, here's a link to a  biography/appreciation I found in, of all places, the Annals of Thoracic Surgery, while I was rummaging around for this picture of the poet, which accompanies the article. While there are lots of biographies of Williams floating around out there, I chose to share this one, written by another physician-scientist, Dr. Richard Carter, and published in 1999. Williams was himself primarily a pediatrician and obstetrician, so I'm not certain why a journal dedicated to thoracic surgery published this article about him unless it was for a thoracic oncology patient-poet like me to find for encouragement and inspiration some decades down the road. Even after being incapacitated by multiple strokes, Williams kept writing.

And what I mean to say most of all, is that I have been given the very fine gift of MORE TIME to be here with y'all, for which I am ever grateful.

Compassionate Accessorizing

In early June I did the unthinkably daring (and possibly foolhardy) thing of driving from Nashville to the Hudson Valley to spend time with my family in New York—yes, as a cancer patient in the dangerous time of COVID.

The drive that used to be so routine became a germ-avoiding odyssey. I was so very careful getting here. I packed all my own food and drink for the trip. I wore a mask and gloves at rest-stops and gas stations and sanitized, sanitized, sanitized. I didn't buy even so much as a cup of coffee on the road, and slept in my tent on the ground in a lonesome, wooded campsite in Northern Virginia so as not to rest my head on a potentially germ-ridden bed in a hotel. (I'll do the same on the way home.)

And I've been rewarded with wonderful stays on our family farm tucked away in a remote corner of the Catskill Mountains, and at my sister's beautiful home near the Hudson River. I've taken long walks in the woods and gone biking along rail trails. There's been lots and lots of good food, good rest, gorgeous vistas, mountains and streams and rivers, and lots of time soaking up the groovy Hudson Valley-Catskill Mountains summertime vibe. I even made a quick trip across the border to see a friend in Massachusetts. And I've felt very safe the whole time.

The trip has been all about the mask and the hand sanitizer. And social distance. 

I've been masking up, sanitizing, and social distancing with some dedication ever since all pandemic hell broke loose back in March, but I think I do it now with even greater vigilance while moving about the country. Riding on the rail trail --- masked. Walking in the nature preserve --- masked. Going to the grocery or to get take-out --- masked. Like so many folks, I have a hand sanitizer pump bottle and some wipes in my car, and I carry one or two little bottles in my purse or pocket at all times.

The good thing is that nearly all of the people I've seen in most of the places I've been while here in the Northeast have been masked. Once I saw an unmasked woman enter a grocery store, and a staff person courteously reminded her she needed to wear a mask. The woman gasped, not at the fact that she had to wear a mask, but at the fact that she had forgotten hers in her car. She apologized, ran out to get her mask, came back a few moments later, and went about her business. 

But I know that's not the case everywhere. COVID infection and mortality rates are spiking again, especially in the South, including in my red state of Tennessee. The Florida and Texas numbers are especially shocking. And in these places, apparently, mask wearing is some kind of political statement. If you do it, suddenly you're a "nasty liberal" instead of a person with plain old common sense. 

When I lived in Japan in the early 1990s, I saw people wearing masks every single day on the trains, in schools and work places, on the streets, in the parks, and in the stores. I'd arrived during cold and flu season in late December, and the point of wearing the mask wasn't just to keep oneself from getting sick, but to prevent transmission of illnesses to others. As the flu season passed, fewer wore masks, but if someone had the sniffles, a cough, or a cold, and they happened to be out in public, they usually had a mask on. It was normal. It was sensible. It was considerate of other people. It was a healthy practice.

Many Americans, it seems, are not inclined to that sort of common sense or consideration. Nor do they care about public health. Instead, they'd rather have public meltdowns and temper tantrums when asked to wear masks.

The other day a friend texted me from Nashville to say that she had been at a Panera when an unmasked man came in and started haranguing the masked customers and workers, shouting about how wrong it was to wear a mask and screaming at everyone to stop wearing them. 

I've read reports and seen videos of other people doing these things, declaring they had "breathing problems" or that it was their individual right not to wear a mask and that local ordinances or store policies requiring it were violating their rights as Americans. And while I always try to exercise compassion in the face of stupidity, my supply for this kind of nonsense is really running low. I'm at the end of my patience, frankly. (So much for cancer making me a more compassionate and generous person!) 

I know, though, that, like toddlers, these adult public tantrummers are responding to the COVID crisis from a place of fear (primarily) and denial. They, like toddlers, cannot control the world around them, which triggers a fear response, which pisses them off into a downward spiral. They lose any ability to be compassionate or considerate.

People, COVID-19 is not a conspiracy of the "liberal media." It's a real disease, and it is pandemic. People are dying. YOUR life is at risk. And so is mine. Currently, we don't have a good treatment, a cure, or a vaccine. I have confidence that we will. But we don't have it right now.

Wearing of masks, social distancing, and good hand hygiene stop the spread of this disease. There's empirical, scientific evidence to support those claims. We need to do all those things until we 1) can treat it effectively, and/or 2) have a vaccine against it, and/or 3) can cure it, control it, or eradicate it completely. 

My nieces and I were talking the other day about how we can find all sorts of "cute masks" on Etsy, and how some companies are starting to make masks designed to be "more breathable" for workouts as "athletic attire" (though we declared these overpriced and recalled fondly the early DIY mask days of the pandemic). The point is, according to my very wise twenty-something nieces, those who malign masks and refuse to wear them are (besides jeopardizing everyone's health) missing out on a very good opportunity to accessorize. 

So sanitize those hands, social distance, and for goodness sake...mask up, y'all. Accessorize, accessorize, accessorize. And try, at least a tiny bit, to enjoy it.

A Raging Bore

A raging bore...which is better than being a raging boar...or boor.

Friends, my most recent CT scans have been deemed "unremarkable" in the language of medical reporting, and I couldn't be happier to be so dull.

The imaging machinery found no evidence of cancer from my neck on down into my pelvis. So. Eight weeks, and we roll again, next time with the brain, since my particular brand of cancer keeps wanting to throw parties up there, and we need to make sure no revelers are setting up for a rave.

But seriously, it feels impossibly silly to crow about my good news in the face of our current national meltdown, eh?

Despite the ill-effects on my mental health, like normal folks, I've been following the news, which recently has been way more important and way more interesting than my scans. But not interesting in a good way. As wonderful as things are inside my body, and as grateful as I am for that—for all the prayers answered and all the medical science that went into keeping me in good shape on the inside— things on the outside of my body are looking pretty grim. 

America, we have a problem. That problem is us.

We know the root cause of it, going back to the very first time a European brought an enslaved person from the continent of Africa to the Americas, believing humans could "own" one another. Or more precisely, that white people could "own" black people—and force them into labor to enrich white people. It was a fucked up idea then, and we continue to fuck up now when it comes to matters of race and justice.

Our country was founded with the evil of slavery already in place. And despite a war supposedly fought to end it, and laws written to bring all people justice and harmony, we are reminded every day that we still live in a country intensively and hatefully divided.

Unfortunately, much of the current leadership is not up to the task of bringing us together. Speaking of boors. The person whose job it is to lead—to be a model of citizenship, fairness, and good sense—sits tweeting madly on his throne about non-existent conspiracies. (Has anyone seen The Madness of King George? About King George III? Remember how that turned out for him?) We can expect nothing good from Washington.

Oh, and don't get me started on the ideological schism over who wears a mask and who doesn't? What is this...The Watchmen?

People, it's up to us. Up to us to call out racism in ourselves and when we see it in others. It's up to us to be kind and smart. It's up to us to stop racism, violence, injustice, coronavirus, a tanking economy, environmental devastation, general rudeness, and lots of other shitty things I've left off this list. Oh, and cancer. All. At. Once.

No wonder the country is having a meltdown. No wonder I am. See! A complete, raging bore.

So folks, this is all I've got: For God and Country, or just Country if you're an atheist (which is FINE by the way, no judgement here) mask up. We've got some voting to do.

On Boring Old Hair

My hair has grown back, almost a thick as it used to be. While I didn't lose it all to chemo and radiation, after my second infusion, and again after a second round of brain radiation last fall, my silver-white locks fell out in small handfuls, like passengers abandoning ship. The once-thick mane (of which I was quite vain) thinned and thinned, but never so much that it felt necessary to shave my head. I was thankful for the strands that hung in there. The texture changed, though; whenever I combed what was left, it felt brittle and fake, like cheap doll hair.

Lately, the pandemic has everyone up in arms about getting their hair cut. We've all been doing various degrees of quarantine for weeks and weeks; salons and barbershops have been shuttered. We've squabbled up and down about when and how to get them (and lots of other businesses) back open. I'll probably just cut my own hair until I am confident the COVID-19 risk is gone. So maybe it's just that the salon question has made me pay more attention to what's been going on with my own hair, but recently I've noticed it's grown below my shoulders again and looks and feels like mine, not like a plastic doll's. The other day, I braided it into a couple of convenient pigtails and went for a bike ride. So what? Right?

Yeah, not a big deal. Kind of ordinary. Kind of boring.

Except for the cancer. Except for the depth of gratitude I have, now, for boring.

I have scans coming up in a few days. I hope the results are equally boring.

Betwēonum

Between. The word comes into modern English from the Old English; be (meaning by) + twēonum (meaning two). Between two things. Between yes and no is maybe. Between red and yellow some orange.

We are between the beginning and (we hope, someday) the end of a pandemic, our lives suspended...by...what? The strings of our masks, maybe?

I am between scans, between cancer-free (inactive disease, at least) and possible recurrence (this disease comes back...we just don't know when), in a kind of dangling dance between jubilant and cautious – what I've taken to calling my "little life of living large." And right now, the world is with me on this. We're not making any plans.

I walk around the neighborhood, keeping a safe distance from other walkers (though I long to pet everyone's dogs!), and it seems that all the peonies elsewhere have been blooming for weeks. Wet flowers topple their stems after rain in every yard except mine. My pink peonies are still shy, balled up like big marbles, and just starting to show a little color. In this faint pushing forth, they are between bud and full bloom, with tiny ants busying themselves at the sepals' nectaries and standing sentry against other would-be invaders. Nice gig if you can get it.

I've been in a holding pattern with the peonies. I know better than to fret–or to dream–about the imaginary future. But I fret and dream anyway. The virus. A new front porch. Flamboyant flowers. Kayaks. Scans. Shortages. Hiking for miles and miles through another country's mountains. Stop. I'm not going anywhere.

Grief and loss are strewn about the planet like wreckage after a worldwide storm. Except we're not after. We're now. Which is another way of saying we're in between. Now is always in between. Here. In the muck and almost-bloom of it. Yes, I'm not going anywhere soon. I could get used to this.

A Li'l Ragey

Some of my friends reading this post might also see me posting on Facebook or Twitter. And they might have noticed that I've gotten a little less flowery and a little more ragey on my socials. Rage is maybe my least favorite emotion. It eats me all up inside, loses me friends, and gets me the silent treatment from family, who are obliged to love me anyway (in the case of my rages, from a bemused distance). Nevertheless, I have given rage some reign recently. A little gallop in the wind, so to speak. An airing of grievances.

But I worry this rage could be unhealthy, so I'm trying to not feed it things like fear and negativity, gloom and doom. Because we know that stuff is only gonna grow wild, and it doesn't take much for it to sprout into a whole toxic garden of hellacious thorns.

Still, there is the current reality. It is what it is, and considering that reality, you know this rage isn't unfounded or misplaced. If you're reading this, it's quite possible you feel it with me. But when I try to put my finger on the exact cause or source of my own rage, what comes back is the lame phrase "oh....just.....all of it!" And by "it" I mean all the noise that comes in the whirlwind of living in honest-to-goodness pandemic times. The inane policies. The creepy conspiracy theories. The admonishments to do and be better humans. The face-palm-worthy stupidities of leadership. The limits on where I can go and whom I can see. The current efforts to undermine our electoral processes. The failures in protecting our essential workers. The pasta shortages. For real. Pasta shortages. I can't even.

Oh, and cancer. Especially the fact that clinical trials, on which so many late stage patients depend for treatment, are stalled because of the pandemic. Access to other treatments and surgeries have been delayed as well. That sucks too.

And the senseless, needless deaths.

People, I'm trying to turn my rage into good, to harness it as creative and productive energy. I'm trying to keep out of trouble and out of jail (it's nearly impossible to get good cancer treatment when you're a felon). But some days containing that rage, even to a speedy canter, is hard. When I express it, stomping around the house, shouting about the latest absurd headlines, bemoaning the fate of the country, it doesn't change anything. Except my foul mood. I do feel better after a good stomp. So go ahead, darlings, stomp and shout. Embrace your inner toddler for ten minutes, or ten days. It's fine. 

People who love me advise again and again...avoid the news, avoid the socials. They'll just make you upset.

I don't want to be that ostrich.

So I'm gonna ride this rage and hope it doesn't buck me off. And I'm gonna being fuckin' grateful I'm alive to feel it.