a radio was on.

My friend Robin says the in breath is the present, the out breath is the past.  I've struggled to find solace in Buddhism, perhaps a path, but it is hard for me to be comforted by impermanence, even as it crowds my vision in this late winter.  But what Robin says offers a path through our sorrows, both real and anticipated. Death has been no stranger of late; you know of what I speak, the grief caught in your throats. When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever- returning spring. Walt Whitman writes here of death, the death of Abraham Lincoln, yoking mourning and spring, the time of the new, of rebirth, of planting.  Towards the end of the poem, he travels with death, companionably, something unlike Dante: "Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me/And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,/And in the middle as with companions....

My friend Robin says the in breath is the present, the out breath is the past.  I've struggled to find solace in Buddhism, perhaps a path, but it is hard for me to be comforted by impermanence, even as it crowds my vision in this late winter.  But what Robin says offers a path through our sorrows, both real and anticipated. Death has been no stranger of late; you know of what I speak, the grief caught in your throats. When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever- returning spring. Walt Whitman writes here of death, the death of Abraham Lincoln, yoking mourning and spring, the time of the new, of rebirth, of planting.  Towards the end of the poem, he travels with death, companionably, something unlike Dante: "Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me/And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,/And in the middle as with co...

Hope and fear are two sides of one coin--this Buddhist observation is repeated by Sharon Salzberg, who tells us "we move from hope to fear to hope to fear to hope to fear in an endless loop." Yesterday G. from my metastatic support group died.  She had been in hospice care less than a handful of days.    G. scared the hell out of me the first time I went to group.  She was angry and caustic, I thought; she spoke of chemo as the poison "they" pump into our bodies that was going to kill all of us. I don't know what I expected people would talk about in a support group for people with stage four cancer.  I was still in shock from my own diagnosis, I can see that now, and G.'s straight talk and unwillingness to engage with any of the pink ribbon, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, everything happens for a reason bullshit was jarring to me.  I looked at the group leader. I thought she might smooth out some of G.'s edges for the rest of us.  But eve...

Hope and fear are two sides of one coin--this Buddhist observation is repeated by Sharon Salzberg, who tells us "we move from hope to fear to hope to fear to hope to fear in an endless loop." Yesterday G. from my metastatic support group died.  She had been in hospice care less than a handful of days.    G. scared the hell out of me the first time I went to group.  She was angry and caustic, I thought; she spoke of chemo as the poison "they" pump into our bodies that was going to kill all of us. I don't know what I expected people would talk about in a support group for people with stage four cancer.  I was still in shock from my own diagnosis, I can see that now, and G.'s straight talk and unwillingness to engage with any of the pink ribbon, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, everything happens for a reason bullshit was jarring to me.  I looked at the group leader. I thought she might smooth out some of G.'s edges for the rest of us.  But ...

From 1 Corinithians 7:33-8:4 in Papyrus 15, written in the 3rd century.  The original text is written in Koine Greek.  The New King James version:  When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. The 1560 Geneva Bible translated the phrase as "For now we see through a glass darkly," without the comma, which I infinitely prefer. I like the headlong rush from mirror to darkly, without pause, without drawing a line in the sand between what we see in the mirror and the existential pain of the word darkly. I don't know if I think things were so simple when we were children--perhaps it was harder to step away and look at oneself experiencing the world, a world that was not simple, often not kind, and filled with challenge.  But I have not been able to stray f...

From 1 Corinithians 7:33-8:4 in Papyrus 15, written in the 3rd century.  The original text is written in Koine Greek.  The New King James version:  When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. The 1560 Geneva Bible translated the phrase as "For now we see through a glass darkly," without the comma, which I infinitely prefer. I like the headlong rush from mirror to darkly, without pause, without drawing a line in the sand between what we see in the mirror and the existential pain of the word darkly. I don't know if I think things were so simple when we were children--perhaps it was harder to step away and look at oneself experiencing the world, a world that was not simple, often not kind, and filled with challenge.  But I have not been able to...

dear readers. I have a new doctor on the west coast--I think of her as the love child of alternative medicine (she studied under Dr. Andrew Weil) and scorched earth medicining.  She is working at my behest on everything from carefully chosen supplements (based on blood work rather than on my haphazard approach, which has been to add everything I read about with some relationship to cancer--the Chinese mushrooms, the ginger tonics, the beautifully named astragulus), to emotional healing (which involves a kind of meditation where I imagine fire flies flickering in all parts of my body--not that she told me to do that--it is just what comes up when I am very very quiet (and it must be remnants of several years in Clintonville, Ohio, as a young child, when we played outside at dusk amongst the twinkling fireflies and the diving, swooshing bats)), to a review of all of the relevant clinical trials both to make sure we aren't missing any opportunities now and for later, when the cancer m...