Original Creative Piece: Sometimes

Sometimes, there are so many words inside of my head, I feel like I might explode. I have poems, and stories, vivid memories and hazy images, all scrambling to escape.

Sometimes, those words hit my soul.

Ocean.

Water.

Waves.

Salt.

Floating. Adrift. Endless.

Sometimes, I write about the sea

Sometimes, I don't know how to say what I want to say.

Honest? Hurtful? Unfiltered? Blunt? Brutal?

Softened? Eased? Semi-true?

I don't know where my inspiration comes from. My Rockstar Neurosurgeon has been inside my head. Has he met my Muse? Does he know where the ideas hide? Where they develop? How they are born?

Sometimes, the words burn inside of me. An inferno of rage. A conflagration consuming me from deep inside.

Hot.

Hateful.

Unkind.

The worst parts, burned beyond ugliness. Too charred to share.

Sometimes, the thoughts fly out of my head. Too jumbled, bursting forth like starlings flying together and apart as if of one mind. Flying is better than falling. Few things are better than flying. Flying is freedom. Falling is inevitable. Falling is fate, for all of us, eventually.

Sometimes, the words are the most important thing in the world.

Sometimes, they are just words.

Inspired and motivated and random thoughts

Today I feel inspired and motivated. I've been reading and resting and hanging out with my niece who came to visit. But today, I woke up ready to write a real chapter of my book. No time to waste, need to get these words out of my head and onto the screen.

I have joined a few communities recently, including the writing group which I know I have mentioned. I've made some really amazing cancer friends (online, of course *thanks quarantine*). I've been learning from my co-conspirators in this terrible club we are all members of, and I've been able to take better care of my mental health this way. Before, I thought I was too fragile and too afraid to have cancer friends. But even with all the different stages and types of cancer, we are all sharing valuable experiences, even if they are often incredibly unpleasant.

Let's talk mental health. From the beginning, I knew I would need help. If you have a cold, you take Dayquil, right? There's no shame in taking some medicine to stop the flow of boogies and constant sneezing. You might even pop some extra vitamin C to hopefully prevent the flu or some sinus infection from taking you out. I know enough about myself to know that I am predisposed to depression and anxiety, so from the beginning, I knew I would need chemical help to make it through all of this. I'm not ashamed to say that I am on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills and even birth control pills to keep my brain chemistry and hormones evened out and relatively balanced.

So when this all started, I got into regular talk therapy and also tried music therapy. Neither of these was quite the right fit for me. That doesn't mean that therapy doesn't work, but for me, I needed something different.

The wild thing that I truly never expected was my cancer writing group to be more beneficial for my overall mental health and stability than so-called real therapy would be. I've always been a reader, and I've always written when my feelings overwhelmed me; somehow I never realized the connection between the emotion and the release/acceptance of how I was feeling.

Anyway, if you just wanted a regular cancer update: still have it, chemo sucks, blah. Good times.

Original poem: Ode to Langston Hughes

Harlem - By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up

      like a raisin in the sun?

      Or fester like a sore—

      And then run?

      Does it stink like rotten meat?

      Or crust and sugar over—

      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags

      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?

My poem:

Ode to Langston Hughes’ “Harlem”

I have a dream

I’m sorry, chemo brain gave me the wrong black history guy

I want to scream

The weight of his words

Falling from the sky

Flittering like birds

Ideas stuck inside of me

My brain is running dry

Can cancer make you not love me?

We carry this shared weight

You and me, and we, and I

Hope seems like cruel bait

The future is a trap

Time just keeps going by

There’s only so much around which my mind can wrap

Langston Hughes infects my memories

Of literature classes gone by

Will my students remember me?

Langston Hughes knew what to do with the words

With the right words, we can fly

I have a dream of being a bird

-         25 March 2020

Fave Quote of the Book: Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Amazon describes it like this:

Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

One of my favorite bits:
The narrator reads a book by a doctor who write horror novels. In that book, the narrator reads, "No art is possible without a dance with death" (Vonnegut 21).

I am no doctor, and I am too much of a scaredy-cat to write or read horror novels, but this one sentence really spoke to me. Seeing as how I have cancer, and have had three brain surgeries in the last nine months, I'd argue that I've danced with death, at least a little, here and there. I'd also argue that some of my best writing has come about after my diagnosis, if I may be so bold as to toot my own horn here.

My diagnosis has made me even more cognizant of my own mortality, but beyond that, I've realized that I have so much left to say. The words pile up inside of me, as I write this blog, letters and cards to my loved ones (SNAIL MAIL!), in my own journal, the book that I'm writing. I have so many words, and even when I'm exhausted from the terrible insomnia, and even when I'm goldfishing, I've stories and poems and memories to share. I write and I write, and eventually, I sleep, and I read, and I write. If for nothing else, this has been a blessing for inspiring me to put ass to chair and hands on the keyboard, and I write and I write.

So it goes.

A Love Letter to The Husband

As a note, I've joined a creative writing group. I have found myself inspired to write short pieces, poems, unstructured stream of consciousness pieces, highly-structured sonnets. I wrote this piece a couple of weeks ago, and I thought that today would be a nice day to share it.

The prompt for this piece was an image of a hand.

Untitled #1
my husband, my caregiver
strong hands, strong heart
protecting me with every fiber of his soul
holding me up when I am too weak to stand
dosing out my meds into my old-people-pill-box
my head hurts - the incision aches
his strong hands carefully clean the wound
mindfully protecting me from infection
those hands that I've memorized for twenty years
I know the story behind every scar, every blemish
those hands with their flaws embrace my own flaws
wiping away my tears, holding me close
I know that I could not be here if
I didn't have his strong hands, strong heart
holding the pieces of me together

Fave Quote of the Book: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Amazon link:

One of the twentieth century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career.

The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility, the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth -- these universal themes dominate the novel. Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an account of the history of the human race.

I've read this book before, and only recently finished it. I don't know if I struggled with it because my brains have been poked and prodded, or because my memory sucks, or because this is just a tough book, but it takes place over the course of a literal hundred years, and many of the characters have the same names across generations. Aureliano Buendía and the 17 (literally 17) other Aurelianos over the years made this book a challenge for me this time around, but even though I found it challenging, I loved it. Gabriel García Marquez is the king of magical realism, and he gives the reader no chance to figure out which way is up before someone inexplicably floats away, someone else goes blind and nobody notices, and for no discernible reason, it rains for more than four years.

The version I read was translated by Gregory Rabassa, and he did an incredible job of keeping the lyrical prose and the poetry embedded in the plot with chapters that enveloped me in beautiful words and sentences like a warm blanket.

My favorite quote from this book, when a group of men are traveling through a dense jungle:

"The men on the expedition felt overwhelmed by their most ancient memories in that paradise of dampness and silence, going back to before original sin . . . For a week, almost without speaking, they went ahead like sleepwalkers through a universe of grief" (Garcia Marquez 11).

A universe of grief. My God, how beautiful is that?

I imagine the all-encompassing silence in this dense jungle. I remember the days after my diagnosis. After the sobbing, after the hysterics, the panic and fear. The stillness in the house. I felt like I was silently drowning in my sorrow. Shattered to pieces, scattered all over the floor. Days merged into nights, and still I cried until I was all dried up inside.

The men in this chapter are overwhelmed by ancient memories, and I was overwhelmed with ancient traumas from my youth rising to the surface unexpectedly. Old hurts mixed with the new, perhaps as a reminder we are made of all the pieces of our pasts, whether we like it or not. They say that the present is a gift, but if I may be so crude, sometimes, it is a shitty gift, the kind where you paste on a fake smile and hope nobody notices the disappointment in your eyes.

This universe of grief still overwhelms me. I mourn the many things I have lost, from the piece of bone in my skull to the ability to actively engage in large groups of people without debilitating anxiety. I grieve for all of these lost things, but none of that grief can be expressed as beautifully as GGM did. Read this book. It is beautiful and it is weird, and it is worth every page.

Fave Quote of the Book: So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

 My favorite book (counting it as one because I have it as one complete and ultimate anthology) is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I own at least 2 and possibly as many as 6 different copies/versions. There's the copy I read:

 But there is also the leather-bound copy with gilded edges. The paperback radio-script. The movie. The BBC miniseries (on Prime). All twelve episodes of the radio play. And most recently, this:

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams

Amazon Link

Now, why would I need a copy of just book 4 of the trilogy?

Before I answer that, let me tell you a story. Back before The Husband was The Husband, he worked at a bookstore. Dangerous place to get a paycheck if you are me, but luckily (I suppose) I did not work at that bookstore. But oh how I loved that bookstore. And I found out that people who work at these type of bookstores have access to things that I never dreamed of. Rare books. Databases. Dealers.

One day, the not-yet-husband gave me a gift. I don't remember if it was a Christmas gift, or a birthday gift, or a just-because gift, but this gift was a very effective love letter to me. He got me a very rare signed first edition of a book by one of my favorite authors (Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman). When he explained to me what he went through to get this book for me, that was one (of the many) moments that I knew this wonderful man loved me.


Over the years, I have acquired quite a few signed books, as gifts from friends, from The Husband, as lucky finds. It is important that you know that signed books are not for reading. They are for admiring.

What that means is that for every book of which I have a signed copy, I have a reading copy. We don't just go pawing signed books. We look with our eyes, but never touch with our hands.

Now, prepare yourselves. This is gonna get mushy.

I know that every signed book I've gotten from The Husband has been a love letter to me. He knows exactly the way to my heart. My love letter to him is in sharing my favorite books with him. He doesn't have to love them the way that I do, but getting a peek into these beloved books gives him a peek into my soul. Sometimes I feel like this is not enough, but those books make me who I am. Understanding my favorite books means he understands me.

My favorite quote from this specific book (but not from the complete series) is from Wonko the Sane:


Fave quote:
“[T]he reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting” (Adams 587; emphasis added).

Now, I am no scientist (too much math involved) but I love this. Always see first.

When I saw this scribble on the front page of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, I don't know what I was expecting, but what I saw was yet another love letter from The Husband. I've always wanted something signed by Douglas Adams, but because he died almost 20 years ago, finding and verifying items with his signature is decidedly more difficult than finding signed Neil Gaimans, of which I have three signed items.

Have I mentioned how much I love The Husband? Not just because he knows my love language is books, but because he knows which books, which means he knows me. He sees me.

Van Gogh-ing to the Museum!

The Husband is awesome. My friend K is awesome. My friend Z is awesome.

K mentioned on Facebook that there was going to be a Van Gogh exhibit nearby, about two hours away. I mentioned it to The Husband, who immediately said, "Book a hotel. We're going."

He knows how I feel about Van Gogh.

My friend Z joined us, which as always, I enjoyed hanging out with one of my oldest and closest friends.

This exhibit had 12 of Van Gogh's works, along with many other works by other artists to demonstrate those who influenced Van Gogh, or were influenced by him.

I love Van Gogh. This will sound ridiculous and I don't care, I always liked Van Gogh, but it wasn't until the Van Gogh episode of Doctor Who that I discovered that I loved Van Gogh.

By no means am I some kind of art critic or art historian. I know what I like. Sometimes, I even know why I like it. I also know what I don't like, and sometimes I can verbalize why I don't like it. As The Husband and Z and I discussed at length, not all art is art just because someone called it art, and some works, while skillfully created, should not be considered art.

How do you decide what is art?

For me, not everything that Van Gogh painted, drew, and sketched was art, but so much of it is. For me, I call it art because it makes me feel something. Because I feel like I can relate to it. Because I feel like I can understand what the artist was feeling.

Van Gogh was well-known to be a troubled man. He suffered from depression, and did not find success as an artist until after his death.

The thing that I like about so many of his works is that they make me sad. It may sound strange to say it like that, but it's true. He was a sad man, and that sadness radiates off of the canvas. Sure, I like Starry Night, everyone likes Starry Night, but he had so many masterpieces. Starry Night looks like he was looking at the sky through tears.

The exhibit we went to did not have Starry Night, but it did have Self-Portrait. I love this one. He looks so angry. Almost hateful. Somewhere beneath the rage in his eyes, I see a sense of self-loathing.

To look into his eyes in this painting is to feel his pain. He is so serious. You can't smile for this picture. You can only try to understand an artist who seems to have been caught by surprise, who did not have time to paste a fake smile on his face, who showed a vulnerability that he didn't necessarily want to show.

How did he paint this? Did he spend his winter of 1886-7 looking at himself in a mirror? Examining every detail of his face, the darkness behind his eyes? Did he struggle to look at himself?

When I have been in the deepest depressions, I have had trouble even looking myself in the eyes in the mirror. There have been times when weeks or months have passed and I haven't seen my own eyes because I couldn't bear to look at myself.

Did he feel some catharsis in painting himself? Did it hurt him to have to look at himself just to get this painting done?

I, too, have suffered from depression at various points in my life. I look into his eyes, and I feel a certain, almost, kinship, and then I saw this:

This is Man with Spade. The write-up next to it said that this was a worker taking a lunch break from digging ditches, but what I saw was a soldier, exhausted, after digging graves. Yes, I know that it's dark, but it is Van Gogh, and again, it felt like grief radiating from the charcoal in the sketch.

A Trunk of a Tree. Not a painting, but a pen and sepia on paper. I love the details in this work. I love that the top of the tree appears very intentionally detailed, with strong lines. I love that the trunk of the tree is remarkably understated, as if added detail would be unnecessary. I just love this.

 Finally, here is Constantin Meunier's Ophelie. It is not a Van Gogh, but I saw this painting out of the corner of my eye and I was drawn to it. The paleness of the figure. The darkness of her gown. The storm clouds to the right, and what looks like a clearing in the sky on the left, as if her troubles are past now that she has taken this final action.

I so enjoyed our visit to the museum, and The Husband was kind enough to buy me goodies from the gift shop. I was very tired, as this was the longest I had been on my feet. What this means is that my impulse control was all but gone, and I wanted ALL the Van Gogh souvenirs from the gift shop. I didn't get ALL of them, but I got two beautiful packs of notecards (who wants to be a pen pal?), stickers, a print, some postcards to put in my journal, and a magnet (that I made Z buy for me).

So there you have it: proof that I can do more than read books and have cancer! Ha!