My Great Breast Cancer Adventure

Pumpkin Art

Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Three years ago, had I been presented with the choice between going to see a glass pumpkin patch in San Rafael...or staying home to work and/or worry about work and money and my lack of free time, I'd have chosen the latter. But that was Pre-Breast Cancer Diagnosis, and this is Post.

Now I live in the land of New Normal, where work no longer takes precedence over personal relationships (you know, stuff like love and friendship)...or creativity and spirituality and fun. That's what I try for, anyway.

So this past Sunday, Jack, Livvy B. and I went on an outing to see my friend Kerry's brand new business endeavor - a pumpkin patch filled with beautiful glass pumpkins of all shapes, sizes and colors. Judging from its successful launch last weekend, this pumpkin extravaganza will most likely become an annual event in San Rafael.

Here's what I like and admire about Kerry's new business:

1) Part of the proceeds will always go to benefit an organization called Seacology,  "the world's premier nonprofit, nongovernmental organization (NGO) with the sole and unique purpose of preserving the environments and cultures of islands throughout the globe." (www.seacology.org)

2) It is a business that supports artists/artisans who create these unique, handblown glass pumpkins (and other handblown glass creations).

3) It is a clever and creative way for Kerry, who recently retired from a loooooong stint as a Montessori pre-school director, to supplement her retirement income, and to continue to do interesting and worthwhile work without having to work full time anymore. More power to her, I say! I'm a long way from ever not working full time, or so it seems right now. But who knows? Maybe this will inspire me to figure out a way to NOT have to work full time until the day I die.

Speaking of death (you all know by now that at least 51 percent of this blog's content must be about - or in some way allude to - death, right? And that's not a bad thing, because to my mind, thinking about death is an excellent way to provoke a deeper appreciation of life), let me just add something that I heard Dr. Phil say the other day, which was that  when you reach a certain age (let's say 50 or over) life doesn't seem quite as endless when you think about the time you have left in terms of months rather than years. Let's say that, according to statistics, you have 20 years left. Sounds pretty substantial, right? But that's only 240 months. Yikes. Or what about 10 years? That's only 120 months.

I don't know about you, but my months SPEED by, so 120 of them - or even 240 - doesn't seem like all that much to me.

Food for thought. And yes, we splurged on a pumpkin. Cranberry red. If you set it on an electric base with a light, it glows in the most lovely way.

The Project - Update

Okay! The back and side of the house are finished. Only the front remains. Here's the link to a set of photos showing the evolution of painting a "patchwork quilt" house. The best and easiest way to view it is to open the set and then look in the upper righthand corner and click the "slideshow" link. And then choose (in the lower left) the "fast" speed, because slow and medium take way too long.

As for Everything Else, well, the loft deal should close on Halloween Day; and this morning I'm in the middle of compiling Round Robin favorites (just taking a break from that to do this blog post); and Olivia threw up at 7 a.m. but doesn't appear to be sick; and I still don't know if I'm going to be able to negotiate a new lease at the Berkeley Writing Salon site (it's looking less and less likely; I'll probably know by the end of the week); and I'm procrastinating on scheduling another expensive MRI that will cost me $1500 again (my deductible), but I have to do it because it has been a year and a half since the last one; and I doubled my dose of Vitamin D3 from 2000 IU to 4000 IU because more and more studies are showing a connection between Vit. D defiency and breast cancer; and the thermography report was pretty good: right breast fine, left breast slightly hyper-vascular, which could be a sign of a recurrence or, more likely, a result of damages and scarring done by the surgery (lumpectomy) - I'll have another one done in three months; and meanwhile, the hormone balancing continues - it's a slow process but well worth it. . .

. . . and what else? Will is doing well (currently performing in Toronto); and my friends are all doing well (Toby, for example, has a great new job; and Kerry did her "glass pumpkin patch" extravaganza in San Rafael yesterday, of which I took some photos that I'll post tomorrow); and this morning my sister Jill in Idaho sent some old photos of my mother, which were sent to her from my sister Alacia in San Diego, which were sent to her from our cousin Lisa in Washington D.C. Lisa, by the way, saw Will perform in Washington D.C. a few months ago, and then met him after the show. She sent me photos from that show and also one of her and Will together, after the show.

Lisa, if you are by some chance reading this, I only JUST REMEMBERED that although I did respond to your last email with the photos, I didn't send it; I saved it as a draft and then forgot to go back and finish it, and then, much later, mindlessly emptied my Drafts folder when I was trying to get more memory in my email program. Duh! Cliff Notes Summary of what I said: Thank you for sending those photos!

And thank you, too, for sending THESE:

First pic: My Mom on the left (Mom died in 1999 of ovarian cancer, at the age of 66), and my Aunt Loretta (Lisa's mom) on the right:

Second and third pics: My Mom on the RIGHT, my Aunt Loretta on the left:

Moon Over Construction

Moon Over Construction
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Jack, Olivia and I went for a walk a couple of evenings ago when it was WARM with NO WIND at 6:30 p.m. One of those rare SF "summery" days (albeit in October).

This time we ventured out of Bernal Heights all the way over to the Mission District, where we strolled up and down on Bryant and York streets, between 19th and 22nd streets. We wanted to see how it FELT to walk around in that particular neighborhood, because that particular neighborhood is going to be the new Writing Salon home, come January.

Yep, our new location will be in the Mills Building, a beautiful old brick building that was once a cotton factory (mill? wholesale outlet?) and now contains 45 live/work units for artists and arts-related businesses.

Of course I snapped a few photos, including this one of the Mission Moon.

This is What I Revere

Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Simple, peaceful, sturdy, stalwart, scrappy. Layered, peeling, leaning but not falling, not failing. Urban nature.

Delicate

Delicate
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

A flower around the corner from here. It represents my disposition.

According to Some Secret Computer Program...

... that is called "Dopiaza," these photos (out of more than 1500) are my most "interesting." No one knows how Dopiaza determines "interestingness," but it's fun to see which of your photos pop up. 

Wish I had more to say, but I am (I have decided) in the midst of a powerful astrological convergence of planets having to do with "heavy duty business negotiations, incessant delays, maddening miscommunications, financial fears, and the ensuing anxiety and stress-related heart palpitations, short temperedness, and inability to focus on anything else that I would normally be doing."

It's the exact opposite of the feelings I have while taking or editing photos (or doing anything that's joyfully creative). My hope is that this planetary convergence will be ultimately fruitful and mercifully short-lived.

Coffee Cup Mania

Coffee Cup Mania
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Appropo for a Monday morning, yes?

So Many Things to Say, So Little Time to Say Them

For the last four months I seem to have been existing within another time-dimension. Ever since discovering photography, the way my hours arrange themselves around me, and the way I arrange myself within my hours, has been different. For one thing, words have failed me; or maybe a better way to put it would be: I have failed words. My bad.

My dear friend Ms. K. recently wrote to me, after I sent her a page or two of writing - the only writing I'd done in a month - and said: "These character sketches are wonderful and imaginative, you maddeningly pigheaded 'I'm-not-interested-in-writing anymore' woman!"

Of course this pleased me. I like compliments, even those embroidered with words such as "pigheaded!"

Since my life (personal and work, but esp. work) is crazy right now (which I'm sure the majority of whoever is reading this will identify with, right?), I'll fill today's blog post space with the last character sketches (two of 'em) that Ms. K liked. Then I'll move on to the drugstore, the doctor's appointment at 1 p.m., the appointment with the real estate agent at 3 p.m., and the gathering together of tax records and bank statements for the mortgage broker (specifics to come later; it's too soon at this point to have any real "news" on the "can I become a property owner in SF?" front). I can only say "no, it's not the my beloved cottage on Moultrie St."

After all the appointments are over with, I'll finish preparing the stuff I need to send out to my 28 new Round Robin students. They're a good solid bunch; we should have a fun run this session.  Trying to keep up with reading 28 daily writes a day, seven days a week, will be exhausting but also exhilarating and inspiring.

Finally, as the day winds down and I turn toward rest and relaxation, I'll probably head to Flickr. That, or maybe Jack and I will start watching the first season of Dexter, which just arrived in the mail from Netflix. I hear it's delightfully wicked.

Character Sketches:

Wanda Interrupted

Wanda said hello into the little cell phone, which she held up to her left ear with her left hand, as she attempted to keep a good grip, with her right hand, on Post Office Box's leash. All around her, walls were peeling — the city walls of imperfectly maintained houses. One trickle of blue, the blue of a former layer of paint, dripped down the crusty stucco wall that Post Office Box had stopped to smell.

"I know!" she said to the phone. "Me too! Just thinking about my cup of morning coffee is what gets me out of bed in the morning. That one cup. It's all I need. But I digress. . . Let's cut to the chase. What happened with Stephen?"

Post Office Box pulled toward a row of fuzzy unopened California poppy buds. Georgia said that Stephen had made her feel beautiful.

"How did he do that?" said Wanda, as she passed a scratched and graffittied dumpster. "With his camera," said Georgia.

"He took pictures of you? Oh my god. Before or after? Or before AND after? I'm assuming there was a before-and-after, right?"

"Let's just say," said Georgia, "that the definition of my left nipple was tantalizingly visible."

The smell of pepperoni pizza interrupted Wanda's intention to respond with an "ooooh la la exclamation-point exclamation-point." She could turn left toward the hill or cross the street and make a stop at Sophia's Pizzeria. Post Office Box indicated with a tug that his preference would be Sophia's.

They stepped off the curb just as the motorcycle emerged out of a slight tear in the fabric of the universe. The decades to come rose like feathers from a burst pillow and fluttered down toward the cracked, patched and repatched asphalt.

Sophia was one of the first people to arrive at the scene of the tear. She picked up Wanda's cell phone, cut Georgia off, and dialed 911. As Wanda traveled in the direction of a defibrillator paddle, the city walls continued to peel and storm, peel and rest, peel and crumble and curl and shine and cry their trickles of blue, speckles of brown, and intricately textured bursts of splinters and rust, futures, pasts and all the other wonders of oxidation.

***

Jimmy in Love

James (Jimmy) Griffin was a 33-year-old painter who had been living in San Francisco for seven years. His last painting — of a drenched sea mouse — had been a poignant elaboration of circles, lines, swirls, cream, foam, plumes and blue-green on a backdrop of melancholy gray.

The motorcycle with which he had hit Wanda wasn't his; he'd borrowed it from Jay, a friend who owned the restaurant and bar where Jimmy currently had eleven paintings on display. In fact, that's where he'd been heading before skidding into Wanda . . . to the opening reception for his show, "Mystery Meat – Eleven Days on the Road."

Like Wanda, and like the woman in the car that had been behind him, and like the guy on the bicycle that had zipped in front of him after ignoring the stop sign, James had been holding his little cell phone up to his ear. He'd been listening to his ex-girlfriend-but-still-a-good-friend Kelly, who was holding forth on the woes of not having an appropriate dress to wear to Manuel and Bridgette's wedding on Saturday.

Lying in the hospital bed eating hospital food, reading books, watching movies, waiting for visiting hours, and writing to lawyers had been the last way Jimmy had ever expected to spend the last three months of his thirty-third year on earth. But at least he'd learned to take nothing for granted ever again. Every day as he exercised his messed-up legs — ten trips up and down the hallway, past the nurse's station, all the way to the ghoul-filled chemo room and back — he saw every inch of the world in a new electric blue light.

A month ago they'd let him set up an easel in the corner of his room, where he was learning to wield a brush with his left and now only hand. Wanda, who early on had recognized him as a person of singularly admirable artistic abilities, had been helping him a lot with that. A refusal to give up was part of her irresistibleness, that way she had of saying, "Jimmy, let's talk about the possibility of GOING there."

THE END!

 

San Francisco Seen Through the Eyes of a Kansas Girl

San Francisco Seen Through the Eyes of a Kansas Girl
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.'
— Henry David Thoreau

Untitled

Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Beautiful Graffitti. . .

Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

. . . at the top of Bernal Hill.

Crooked Stairs, Piles of Leaves

Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Window By Bernal Hill

Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Bulldozer Beauty

#1 Bulldozer Beauty
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
— Henry David Thoreau

Ms. Bouchet

Ms. Bouchet
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

I'm rushing off to an appt. with Efrem (acupuncture, Chinese herbs), but here's one of my favorite recent shots of my sweet girl with her stuffed something or other under her chin.

Stay tuned for my assessment of a book I just started to read: Preventing Menopause: How to Stop Menopause Before It Starts. So interesting!

Correction to Yesterday's Post

There was a line in yesterday's post that I want to change:

"So here's my fragment of unfinished work:"

I realize now that that line was misleading and untrue. It should have read:

"So here's one of my 'unfinished fragments,' which I now realize is neither unfinished nor a fragment. It's simply a short piece of writing that says what I wanted and needed to say. It might not fit into any traditional category (short story, novel, memoir, or poem), but that's okay with me. I like it the way it is, and I have 'published' it in my blog, and that's it. I'm not planning to cut it down into a poem... or flesh it out into a short story...or add it to a chapter of a 'someday' memoir.

It is what it is!

Change of Pace

This morning I stumbled upon a short "creative" write, which I did about four months ago. It was sitting in an email folder labeled "Novel," one of the many folders and files in my computer that are filled with "bits and pieces" as opposed to "finished works." I clicked on it accidentally; had meant to click on a different folder.

I may very well already have posted it (or some other version of it) here on this blog. But I'm going to recycle it, partly because, I think, I've been drawn back, over the last couple of days,  into the awareness of life's fragility and fleetingness  (I never really forget about this anymore, but sometimes I feel it more deeply than other times). What drew me back? Well, another woman who was on my "breast cancer email discussion list" died a few days ago. It happens every so often. There's no denying it.

I didn't know her personally. Her last post to the list was in July. It was a short post, positive and upbeat, in which she made no mention that she was dealing with recurrence or metastasis. The content of her post was about something else entirely. Less than three months later, poof, no more Susan. She was gone. It happened so fast.

I have heard from others who knew her better, though, that she never regretted her treatment choices. She chose her path and followed it, as best she could, to the end. I admire that.

So here's my fragment of unfinished work:

She looked back over the last six months of a hell that had been shot through with unexpected daggers from heaven, and felt herself smile a new kind of smile. Worrying about the possibilities of recurrence or metastasis had grown tiresome, and Lenore, now sweaty from the daily three-mile walk that had become an integral part of her New Normal, chose instead to marvel at how, still, the beauty persisted — more poetic than ever. The hospitals, the bandages, and all those incomprehensible doctors, well, there was always the chance that they would return to steer her life off course again, but at least now she was more prepared to deal with the dizzying zigs and zags.

Sometimes her breast still ached from the surgery, as it was doing today, which forced her to think about the cancer even though she would have preferred to focus on the upcoming dinner party. There were three pounds of beef marinating in buttermilk in her refrigerator. It had been there for four days. When she got home she would take the it out, pat off the milk with paper towels, and cook it on a low heat for several hours, with carrots and onions and potatoes, until the full moon had risen above the stove, and she had a delectable pot roast fit for even the weakest digestive system. She had no choice but to find a place in her life for this cancer, this uninvited guest. The question for today was, should she hide it on the top shelf of the closet, or display it on the coffee table for all the other guests to see?

Striding on up toward the hill, she leaned into the sidewalk, walking walking walking. She leaned over twigs sprawled at her feet, leaned over cracks in the buckling cement. She could feel her own branches growing up and out, wending their way through crack after crack after crack. Stones clustered around her feet. Stones, weeds and yellow petaled flowers. Her body leaned out over its own exposed roots, and it came to her then, in an unexpected flash of grief, that she had never helped her brother take his pills. She had never helped her baby brother take all those goddamn awful piles of pills. She could see the pill containers sitting on his kitchen table, bedside table and coffee table. She could see how exhausted he must have been.

She stopped to snap a picture of two small trees standing very very close to one another, side-by-side in black, bare-limbed silhouette against the San Francisco sunset. It was as if, even if only by virtue of proximity, they were related, their shoulders touching as they talked quietly, supporting one another.

She picked up her pace again, pushed herself faster, harder, until she got so warm she had to take off her jacket and tie it around her waist.

All those pills he had taken when he was alone and counting. If only she had known then what she knew now. About the insanity and the loneliness of pills. About the dutiful hell of trying to remember when and how to take them, every day, without fail. But it was too late now. Her brother was dead, had been dead seven years, and she had never once helped him with his pills.

The Project Thus Far...

The Project Continues 3
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

The Project a Couple of Days Ago...

The Project Continues 2
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

The Project Continues 1
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Jack's Drop Cloth at Dusk

Jack's Dropcloth at Dusk 1
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

I came home from a walk with Olivia and noticed Jack's drop cloth on the sidewalk. I took about twenty different shots of it, this being one of them. Maybe I should change his nickname from "Jackie Pie" to "Jackie Pollack?"

I'm tellin' ya, I'm still obsessed with taking pictures. I joined Flickr a little under four months ago, which is basically when I started taking photos almost every day.  I've uploaded more than 1500 pictures during that time. If you'd like to see a few, here's a guest pass to one of my sets. (You can double click on any photo to enlarge it.)

BTW, it's really easy to sign up to be a Flickr member, say, if you want to look at photos from all over the world even though you aren't posting any yourself; it's free - all you have to do is create a Yahoo ID and password.