return

in arcata. humboldt co. just arrived. have not been here we determined in 4 yrs. a strange phenomenon to be back. more in due time
...

blowing dust

as mentioned previously, marg and i have re-begun working on THE BOOK. it's difficult and slow-going b/c neither of us has written a book before for one.
for two the subject matter is difficult. for three each of us has a very
particular writing style/approach/discipline that may or may not line up w/ the other person's.

in any case. on sunday, the new moon, we sat down and hashed out a schedule.
we mapped our approach to tackling the text and non-text parts of the book
and how we'll contend w/ them. monday nite and last nite after work we
sat down and catalogued the mountain of supplemental info we've amassed. most
will probably end up in the non-text parts of the book but
we elected to look at it now in case it should trigger/inspire
ideas or approaches to the text part that were heretofore unseen.
already, just a couple days in and we've found some rich troves on
previously unmined ideas. most attributable to the passage of time
and perspective i'd suppose. still, it is highly emotionally charged
and coming across a bit of paper or an email or an article from
the early part (ie, diagnosis, before surgery) is enough to send us both
reeling.

however, w/ each conversation, w/ each passing second that we are discussing the book, we are refining it. The concept is slowly coming together, fused and compressed into an actual thing. Moving from the nebulous gas of the abstract into being. the motion is exciting and we are entering a new phase.

paris (video)

here's some vacation footage cut together from our trip

the crash(ing)

they all said it would happen. they all said count on it; it will occur and there's no way it couldn't. margaret had hers about a year ago, after we moved into the alder house, shortly after returning from boston, after her role as 'caregiver' had been rescinded due to the good fortune of my health. she was in a daze, a fog of exhaustion, depression, heavy-limbed and unsleeping; a point where i currently find myself residing.

it makes sense in a way: after the giant time and energy-consumers of buying the house, running the marathon, going to paris etc, further paired w/ a sort of
stronger willingness to emerge from the cocoon of living day-to-day and trust
the infallibility of strong numbers there would have to be some type of
external reaction. a depth charge exploded deep under the ocean dark 2.5 yrs ago. Living in that world came equipped with the comforts of an automatic schedule,
a framework of points and margins against which to measure progress, experts to rely upon, to pour faiths into, specific tests and scores and quantifiable goods and bads.

now, finally surfacing, a clenched fist uncurling slowly, back to the real world, the everyday life, the mundane and routine and the peculiar position of trying to be grateful for things, even if they're annoying. the miracles of drawing breath and beating hearts. certain things cannot be reconciled, you just have to live among hazy realizations, you have to accept things, you have to continue - not in spite of them, but because of them.

in any case, this picture was taken in boston in nov 05, after my 34th and penultimate radiation treatment for my brain tumor.

onward, onward, onward

marg just called me from home. 3 envelopes from the nicholl foundation. I had her open them: 3 rejections from Round One. depressing yes but further cementing the absolute random nature of (not having) sucess and how you define it. one of those scripts advanced pretty far in a previous yr, netting me an option (which sounds more exciting than it was, if I find myself w/ a surplus of time i'll recount) and one of the other scripts advanced far as well and got me enough attention to get some semi-respectable representation. Both of those scripts are unchanged and now summarily dismissed from the contest. The other one was the one I love most deeply, the most recent, in other words the one upon whom i had rested my hopes, the one i poured my post-tumored self into, the one that might be The One, the ladder up to the light, the hand from the clouds, the Celestial Nudge but no. Nothing. Silence.

It never gets easier, all these rejections, year after year, it just gets more familiar. As marg said (she a breadloaf finalist this yr, but ultimately a rejectant): why do we do this to ourselves? why are we not accountants?
well, neither of us has the stomach to do accounting but it does, on days like this, seem like a blissfully pain-free and oblivious undertaking comparatively speaking.

the answer was not present in the inflection...

went to see finding normal last night
we'd seen it before but about 8 mos ago
and wanted to show the love for the theatrical run.
it's a stunning movie, stark and hopeful both but
dealing w/ people edging away from darkness, or attempting to.

ran into BL in the lobby and walked around NW w/ him for a spell.
turns out he was meeting an old friend of his from college, a friend who came to the premiere on Friday night, a friend who as it happens
has/had a brain tumor. so we got introduced. no greater
social adhesive than a shared horrible experience to get
the conversation off to a lively start. in any case, it
was like a mirror, an echoed response coming back across the
canyon walls, a reminder of the recent-ness of my own diagnosis
(a mere 2.5 yrs ago) and Sign #22 lately from the Universe to
get to work again on the Book. It also was so strange after
seeing this great movie, to see similarities in life, the life
of the recovered and of the returned, of the spared. A similar
bewilderment, a similar admixture of fear, anger, hope.

the kitten goes home

There was fretting, handwringings, uncertainties. Possible futures stretched out in front of us and found us making the space for them as the day went on – will we foster this found kitten until the owner finds him? Will this be a duration of days? Weeks? What if no one claims him? Ever? Then would this be our new cat? How are we supposed to afford it? Can we find a way? What to do? What to do?

We hatched a plan to place him. Some friends got the hard sell, some the soft but only negatives echoed back: X is allergic, Y has too many cats, Z might one day possibly move in with boyfriend and he doesn’t like cats. Contingency plans collapsed, back-ups foundered.

M registered kitten on the Oreg Humane Society. I posted on craigslist. Meantime, that night we’d bring some flyers down to the school field where we found kitten and keep fingers crossed.

Margaret got home first. Woody, as we’d christened him, was glad to see her, bouncing and purring and eating and yes, bouncing. His enthusiasm hadn’t ebbed by the time I got there. He was impossibly cute and the multiple futures and their inherent choices lay in front of us like fingers of spreading rivers. Rather than drown in them, it was time to walk Maxwell. We headed back to the field where we found Woody and began to put up flyers. We stapled probably a dozen flyers throughout neighborhood as we walked Max. Visions of driving by months later, the weather-beaten flyer still tacked there flashed through me. Would this be that?

But, impossibly, we got the call moments after returning home: I think that’s my kitten.

The reunion is sweet, edged with relief from both parties. A brand new kitten. So brand new as to not yet have a collar. A sleepless night. Just as we’re standing there a neighbor power-walking passes us and chimes in “oh, you found him! Good. He was so worried” and then continues up the street, as if she was an extra, timed into the shot perfectly, the moon emerging overhead in the blue sky. We leave armed with unnecessary gifts – wine, Belgian ale – tokens of gratitude, and spend the rest of the night trying to determine if we did the right thing or not? Should we have just left him there in the field? Look at the strife and headache we created. What was the point of all that? But we would do it again if necessary.

Later, over glasses of wine at a wine bar on Stark, outside and looking up the street, the midnight blue-hued sky, the lights from a marquee, the fist-fight spilling out of a bar across the street, conversation of life, death, brain tumors, friends, ex-friends, and what (not) to do when you find a lost kitten. We are so happy to live in Portland and we are so happy to be alive.