Ponderance

A morbidly obese man comes into Planet Care from time to time. There are periods in which he comes regularly.  Then there are stretches of time in which I never see him.  For a while, he came in nearly every day.  He would be wearing workout-type clothing and look flushed and sweaty as if he'd been exercising.  He would carefully select food from the salad bar, purchase it and sit in the cafe to eat.

Over time, I could tell that he was losing weight.  I knew it was an immense challenge for him.  But he seemed to be on the right track. I felt compelled to tell him that I noticed the results of his efforts.  But I never found the courage to do so.

He came into the store the other day.  He looked as if he'd gained some weight since the last time I saw him. He seemed to be having trouble walking.  He leaned onto the shopping cart in front of him, walking slowly through the store.  He came up to the juice bar and I was overly nice to him.  He would not look at me.  He pondered the selections and asked for a sixteen ounce vegetable juice containing carrots, kale, beet, cucumber, garlic and ginger.  I promptly made this juice for him and handed it to him with all the love I could muster. He never looked at me. 

I watched as he walked to the nearest cashier.  He wore shorts which revealed the dark red of his calves from above his socks nearly to his knees. I know this to be a bad sign.  One of the many complications occurring when one's body cannot handle the excess weight.  I know that obesity could kill this man.  I know it is making his life extremely challenging.  I know that this man has a beautiful starry-eyed daughter who seems to love her father. I know he has everything to gain by working very hard to improve his health.

I know this: I am rooting for him. 

~~~

A woman comes into Planet Care from time to time.  She carries with her a dark cloud.  She speaks as if she is constantly exasperated.  She rolls her eyes in disdain without even realizing she does this.  She orders me to make her a smoothie drink.  She watches as I put the ingredients into the blender and corrects me when I put in too much of one ingredient or too little of another. I feel her exasperation permeating my atmosphere and I sigh rather loudly.  In my imagination, she feels victorious by having made me exasperated like her.  In my mind, she feels vindicated by my exasperation.  And I remember a meme I ran across recently on fecesbook: 

I delivered the smoothie drink to the unpleasant woman and smiled, graciously thanking her and saying, "I hope you enjoy that." 

~~~

An elderly man, very smartly dressed, was walking towards the doors of Planet Care.  On his way out of the store, he paused to pick up one of several free publications on display.  As he paused, I heard him sing, "Que sera, sera.  Whatever will be, will be.  The future's not ours to see.  Que sera, sera." 

For some reason, this struck me as a bit menacing.  I imagined Nick Cave doing a version of this sweet little ditty.  And I thought how very true to life this juxtaposition is.  

The sweetness and the menacing are all but a razor's edge apart.  Darkness in all its myriad forms threatens to envelop us.  But the fundamental sweetness and delicacy of Life permeates even the most menacing darkness.  

Allow the darkness.  Allow the light.  Do not deny yourself the experience of either.  There is no use pretending that darkness does not exist and there is no use pretending that the darkness never ends.  We can deprive ourselves of joy just as we can deprive ourselves of sorrow.  Both will nourish us.  But only if we can allow them to be what they are: temporary states.  And no more. 

Blood

The Cancer Center makes me feel like crying.  Often, I am numb to the experience of being there.  But days like today, I have to stuff my feelings way down in my gut to prevent myself from making a larger-than-life spectacle of myself.

I enter the lobby and check in with a desk person.  I wait in the lobby for a phlebotomist person to call my name.  I go into the lab.  The phlebotomist person swabs my arm with alcohol and stretches a thick rubber band around my upper arm.  Depending on who my phlebotomist person is, we may chit chat about metaphysics, gardening, motorcycles or simply jab each other with good-natured jokes.  Then my arm gets jabbed and blood gets extracted and collected in a tube labeled with my name and other identifying factors like my birth date and probably a case number.

My little vial of blood travels to a room where people with microscopes and other machines count my platelets - as well as other things like my hemoglobin, white blood cells and absolute neutrophils.  My neutrophil count is 3.4, which appears to be low, indicating I am at greater risk from "infectious
agents both inside and outside the body."  Great.

But I digress.

The stats are entered into a computer.  A nurse person in the treatment area/chemo room, takes this information and delivers it to the pharmacy.  The pharmacist person analyzes the data and determines the weekly dosage of NPlate for me to receive.

Around this time, I am called back to the "flush room" to wait.  The flush room is a cubical tucked away in a corner of the chemotherapy treatment area.  Directly across from it is another cubicle where patients receive chemotherapy.  On either side of that are other cubicles. And this is how it is: each patient is in her own cubical.  Each patient has a television to watch in their own cubicle.  The cacophony of televisions is disconcerting at times.  Why doesn't the cancer center supply headphones?  I am glad I do not have to lie around and receive chemotherapy in that environment.  What a complete drag.  I used to have chemo treatments at a cancer center in Kernersville.  It was much smaller and not as busy.  There were no t.v.'s.  I was pretty comfortable there.

Again, I digress.

I wait for the pharmacist to mix up my dose of NPlate.  Meanwhile, a nurse takes my temperature and my blood pressure and makes chit chat before excusing him or herself.  I usually wait ten to twenty minutes for the pharmacist to deliver the NPlate.  Once it arrives, the nurse swabs my arm, the same one I had blood drawn from, and injects the NPlate.  Wham bam and it is done.

This is the ritual in which I participate weekly.  It rarely varies.  There was one week in which my platelet count was so low, I was admitted to the hospital on the spot.  That only happened because I missed my treatment the previous week.  I had the brilliant idea that I would give myself a break from it and go to the beach.  It was a nice break.  But it had ramifications that lasted a couple of weeks.

The emotions vary weekly, however.

One week, I sat in the flush room waiting for my shot and the woman in the cubby immediately in front of me starting throwing up.  I couldn't help but watch.  She sat in her chemo chair with a big plastic bag held in front of her and tossed her cookies.  In all the years of being in a treatment room, this was the first time I have ever witnessed a person lose their lunch.  And as I watched this, a strange feeling crept into my psyche that manifested in the following thought: 'I am not sick!  I do not belong here!  How can I ever get better when I am constantly subjected to the vibe of sickness?!  It was a form of indignation propelled by rage which soon manifested as depression.  I am not sick.  I am not sick!'

Today, I watched an elderly woman across from me as she received a bag of blood.  Her husband sat with her.  They were both thin, though the man looked solid whereas the woman looked frail.  The man had a kind face.  He smiled sweetly at the nurses as they darted in and out.  But he never spoke.  His creased forehead betrayed a worried mind. His eyes betrayed a weariness.  But he patiently sat by his wife.  She was tired, barely able to hold her eyes open.  Every once in a while a sound would cause her to open her eyes and she took in the world around her.  But she soon closed them again.

There was a rural aspect to the couple.   I tried to imagine what they did for a living, if they still work.  They appeared to be in their early 70's.  The man wore a flannel shirt and jeans.  His shoes were nice leather shoes.  Probably his Sunday best.  I imagined he put those on specifically to wear to the Cancer Center. His work shoes, he thought, were not suitable. The woman wore a bandanna around her bald head and an over-sized t-shirt.  A blanket covered her lap.  She wore oval-shaped wire framed glasses.

I watched her and wondered about her life, about their life together.  I was overcome with the urge to get up from my seat in the flush room and go talk to them.  About nothing in particular.  All for the sake of giving them some love.  Just that.  Just hope for their future together.  Just hope for a bit of ease in life.  But I sat there.  Watching the bag of blood slowly empty into her arm via the long line of tubing. Mesmerized by the process.

My platelet count was low today.  It had been holding steady in the normal range for a few weeks.  And I'd actually begun, once again, to hope that I'm going to get well.  That a day will come when I won't need these weekly treatments.  My platelet count today shot that hope down.  Dashed it against the rocks.

I will never be well.  I am not sick.  But I will never be well.

Is it any wonder why I have trouble planning things in advance - why, for example, I cannot entertain the notion of going back to school in pursuit of training for a viable career? Something that I'll be able to do when I'm 60? I have no guarantees that I'll be here that long.  The drug that is injected into my blood weekly has numerous side effects, one of which is increased malignancies.  Since I've already had cancer, this sounds like a raucous cancer party waiting to happen.    

After my injection today, I walked out of the flush room, past all the cubbies filled with people receiving some treatment or another.  I walked down the long corridor from the treatment room to the lobby.  The front door is inhospitable.  I do not care to pass through it.  In a way, it's easier to remain in the cancer center where it is automatically assumed that something is wrong with me than to go out into the world at large where I am perceived to be normal.

I am far from normal.

I have a body that wants me dead.

I have no ambitions in the monetary realm.

I have a vivid imagination that takes over my logic center more times than is useful.

I immerse myself so completely into my creative realm that at times I sacrifice going to bed at a reasonable hour or leaving for work in a timely manner.  My creative realm is much more important to me than time or money.  And that's fine.  It's just every once in a while, I'd like to feel "normal" by other people's standards.

Additionally, when I pass through the doors of the Cancer Center, I must again walk among the senseless violence that plagues the world.  War mongers.  Spree shooters.  Blood runs freely in streets and movie theaters.  The precious source of life that we all take for granted gets emptied out of people against their will.  I willfully allow blood to be drawn from my arm once a week.  But victims of guns did not consent to have their blood emptied out of their bodies. 

Once I pass through the doors of the Cancer Center, the careful environment arranged around the sick falls apart.  And the world at large is perceived.  And it is hard to bear at times.  

I'd like to feel a bit of ease in my life.  I guess I was just projecting my own desire for ease onto the woman directly across from me in the treatment area of the Cancer Center.  Or maybe not.  Maybe there is a universal desire for ease that we all experience.  Maybe I am merely finding this universal desire a bit too compelling to ignore.

I hammer on my keyboard as if the words that come out of my brain matter a damn.  I know that in the larger schematic, they don't.  But for the moment, they are keeping me alive.  They are the long line of tubing connected to the bag of blood running into my veins. They are my medicine.  I allow them to flow forth, hopefully bestowing a bit of lifeblood upon the reader.

Living the Dream

My daughter just quit her job. She tried to leave somewhat immediately, but her employer asked her to stay through July. She said she would. But she's leaving a job that was destroying her.

She said she knew it was time to leave when she noticed that she no longer enjoyed talking to people and that she felt anxious every time the telephone rang. "That's not me, Mom! I love talking to people!" she said. And because of this, she quit her job.

And then, as if the Universe was acknowledging her decision to take care of her Soul, she got a job acting with a regional theatre company in White River Junction, Vermont in September and October. The company is Northern Stage. The production: Amadeus.

White River Junction sounds like a good place to have adventures.

My daughter is an actor. She has been acting since the age of three. Acting has been the primary driving force in her life. She pursues her dream relentlessly. My daughter is the most genuinely happy person I know. It is for this reason that she is my hero.

I dream of quitting my job at Planet Care to pursue my dreams. But then I think about Medical Insurance and a Stable Paycheck. I think about all my Medical Bills, Groceries, Telephone Bills Car Insurance, Rent: I think about maintaining some degree of The Status Quo Lifestyle. And I say to myself, "I'll quit my job when I've secured a reliable source of income."

Now the problem with this line of thinking is that it is first necessary to cut off dead branches before new growth can occur. And sometimes by stepping outside of your comfort zone, you open yourself up to possibilities that might not have presented themselves to you otherwise. This takes a giant leap of faith and courage. And to date, I have not mustered the courage and faith required to make such a leap. The awareness of this creates a friction between the lower self and the True Self. It is an uncomfortable sensation.

This weekend, I participated in the 48 Hour Film Project. My team leader and I had never done this film-making thing before. But we had both dreamed of it. When I was 13, I knew that I wanted to be a film director. But I did not have the resilience or the resourcefulness of my daughter. After being made fun of by people whose opinion mattered to me, I soon put my dream on the back burner. Then I took it off the stove top altogether. But it never completely disappeared.

The lead actor in the film project I worked on was my friend, Joe. Joe and I are a lot alike. We both get distracted by status quo type things and often fail to fuel our creative fires. We both dream of being free - of having a life of unhindered creativity.

Joe and I had a scene together. It was the final, thus, pivotal scene in the story's resolution. The final lines of dialogue are:

Me: "OK! Let's roam!"

Joe: "I'm ready."

There's something strange that happened in the filming of this scene in general and in saying these final lines in particular. It was as if Joe and I simultaneously imagined our lives on the road - free to create. Riding off into the sunset to who knows where with nothing but the possibility of adventure alive in our hearts. For a moment, it was as if we were living the lives of the characters we were portraying.

Last night, I had amazing dreams of expansion and freedom. All day, the taste of these dreams teased my tongue. I felt an indefinable excitement. I began to wonder if simply by pretending to be courageous and filled with an open heart and open mind, one could actually develop these attributes.

All I know for sure is that over the weekend, I honored my childhood dream of making a movie. It was a leap of courage and faith. I walked into this project knowing nothing about film-making. The equipment that we used was completely low-tech as compared to other teams in the project. We had all sorts of technical obstacles. And at one point we were afraid we would need to scrap the story altogether and come up with a "Plan B." But there was a guiding force that kept things together. Maybe it was simply our determination. Maybe it was a mutual sense of Living our Dream. Whatever it was, it had a distinct and potent quality that left a residual confidence and happiness. And today, I am in love with making movies.