my romantic tryst with destiny

The Printer's Error

2012-01-14T08:42:00.000-05:00

by Aaron Fogel

Fellow compositors
and pressworkers!
I, Chief Printer
Frank Steinman,
having worked fifty-
seven years at my trade,
and served five years
as president
of the Holliston
Printer's Council,
being of sound mind
though near death,
leave this testimonial
concerning the nature
of printers' errors.
First: I hold that all books
and all printed
matter have
errors, obvious or no,
and that these are their
most significant moments,
not to be tampered with
by the vanity and folly
of ignorant, academic
textual editors.
Second: I hold that there are
three types of errors, in ascending
order of importance:
One: chance errors
of the printer's trembling hand
not to be corrected incautiously
by foolish professors
and other such rabble
because trembling is part
of divine creation itself.
Two: silent, cool sabotage
by the printer,
the manual laborer
whose protests
have at times taken this
historical form,
covert interferences
not to be corrected
censoriously by the hand
of the second and far
more ignorant saboteur,
the textual editor.
Three: errors
from the touch of God,
divine and often
obscure corrections
of whole books by
nearly unnoticed changes
of single letters
sometimes meaningful but
about which the less said
by preemptive commentary
the better.
Third: I hold that all three
sorts of error,
errors by chance,
errors by workers' protest,
and errors by
God's touch,
are in practice the
same and indistinguishable.
Therefore I,
Frank Steinman,
typographer
for thirty-seven years,
and cooperative Master
of the Holliston Guild
eight years,
being of sound mind and body
though near death
urge the abolition
of all editorial work
whatsoever
and manumission
from all textual editing
to leave what was
as it was, and
as it became,
except insofar as editing
is itself an error, and
therefore also divine.

from The Printer's Error, 2001
Miami University Press, Oxford, Ohio
Copyright 2001 by Aaron Fogel.
All rights reserved.

After Years

2012-01-14T08:40:00.002-05:00

by Ted Kooser

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

from Solo: A Journal of Poetry, Premiere Issue, Spring 1996
Copyright 1996 by Ted Kooser.

Feels like home to me

2011-12-27T11:24:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure where "home" really is any more.

I miss Toronto, and my life there, but on this trip back, like all the other trips I've taken over the past decade, I've slipped right back into where I left off when I left Mumbai all those years ago.

My friends are still my friends, my family as familial- everyone is just a little bit older, and some of them have procreated another generation to survive ours.

I wonder sometimes whether I have a few more moves left in me...

Footprints in the sands of time...

2011-12-06T22:01:00.001-05:00

This week's been different, promising... through calls, messages and memories, I've been reminded of how many people- family and friends I love all over the world. We've reminisced, giggled, talked, typed... These are relationship that have weathered time, and I hope they always will.

We are but the lives we touch over the short span of history that we walk this world.

I've always been amazed by the bonds and friendships my parents have built all over the world over their lives. I realise that my own are no less genuine and meaningful. "It's getting better, growing stronger".

My friend Jane says there's a song for everything. I couldn't agree more as I hummed the lyrics I just added above, but I'll up that. There's a poem for everything too, often duly bastardised by yours truly...

The words that come to mind, again, after I first read them in 1995 in Delft, as I steep in this lovely, present warmth... "and in passing leave behind us, footprints in the sands of time."

Longfellow's truer version of the poem is excerpted below.

A PSALM OF LIFE

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream ! —

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal ;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way ;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle !

Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !

Let the dead Past bury its dead !

Act,— act in the living Present !

Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate ;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Endless Love

2011-12-02T21:59:00.001-05:00

It's one of those days when I've stumbled willingly into the sea that is my life. I swear I didn't see that memory as I tripped on it.

I swim in the encompassing warmth, needing neither air nor light. I'm glad I learned how to sink wilfully at an early age.

I am struck by the infinitely long, glowing tendril that waves in the ocean of my existence. Salty, murky waters, and yet its sinews shine resolutely. Each filament of its ethereal body is more precious than a full hand of flesh chanced on a butcher's block.

That strand was born of an innocence devoid of armour or pretence. I call that love.

We talked, we felt, we believed in possibility. The fragile shoot was conceived in a moment of honesty and chance, where everything seemed possible and nothing was enough. That it has survived silence and separation is proof that it had more meaning than I knew it to be capable of. I call that love.

I wonder how deep it runs...

This chasm of secret ocean is mine. I have no experience to understand its science, only its depth. I guard its sacred boundaries fiercely, even though I do not know where they begin and end.

Silence is also a sound. My mind tries to rationalise, to navigate, to try and figure out what I need to do to climb my way up its gentle length to the light. What actions will I need to take, what words will I have to say, what white horse will I find to ride my way into the heart of my beloved?

And I cannot, for if I hold it, it might break in my hands, and I love it still. There is no happy ending in some bright future. The answers are already with me in these dark, present depths.

I know I must swim back up and sneak quietly into my skin as if I never left it. If I don't, they'll send a search party to find me. I'll send a search party to find me. My slowly silvering head needs me to return to its familiar clutch. My ageing body will howl for its being. My life will demand I be attendant to the plans it is making for me.

But perhaps when I am here next, in this beautiful place, I hope I might not be alone in it. Perhaps that someone who gave life to it with me, might have come back to find it too.

Endless Love

And so it is...

2011-11-14T22:17:00.001-05:00

This song's on my mind tonight.

The line circled the steady curve to return where it had been once, it crossed that point and travelled to where it had been since...

I remember hearing/ seeing Damien Rice performing this song live at the Hummingbird Centre. So much has happened since, and yet nothing has changed.

I smile, with the knowledge that we're destined to travel our journeys, even if they take us right where we are and aught to be.

"And so it is

Just like you said it should be

We'll both forget the breeze

Most of the time..."

Gouge, Adze, Rasp, Hammer

2011-10-25T11:42:00.001-04:00

So this is what it's like when love

leaves, and one is disappointed
that the body and mind continue to exist,

exacting payment from each other,
engaging in stale rituals of desire,
and it would seem the best use of one's time

is not to stand for hours outside
her darkened house, drenched and chilled,
blinking into the slanting rain.

So this is what it's like to have to
practice amiability and learn
to say the orchard looks grand this evening

as the sun slips behind scumbled clouds
and the pears, mellowed to a golden-green,
glow like flames among the boughs.

It is now one claims there is comfort
in the constancy of nature, in the wind's way
of snatching dogwood blossoms from their branches,

scattering them in the dirt, in the slug's
sure, slow arrival to nowhere.
It is now one makes a show of praise

for the lilac that strains so hard to win
attention to its sweet inscrutability,
when one admires instead the lowly

gouge, adze, rasp, hammer--
fire-forged, blunt-syllabled things,
unthought-of until a need exists:

a groove chiseled to a fixed width,
a roof sloped just so. It is now
one knows what it is to envy

the rivet, wrench, vise -- whatever
works unburdened by memory and sight,
while high above the damp fields

flocks of swallows roil and dip,
and streams churn, thick with leaping salmon,
and the bee advances on the rose.

- Chris Forhan

originally published in New England Review
Volume 21, Number 4, Fall 2000

Here comes the rain again...

2011-10-09T15:30:00.002-04:00

I can feel it, in every sinew, in every nerve.
My heart feels a heaviness and a lightness in the very same breath
The unbearable lightness of being.
This is it.
I'm in love again, I think, and this uncertainty is so delirious...

I want the answers now. I want the ending.
But not at the cost of living the story.
I want it all revealed so that the waves that are life, that wrack my being, subside,
and therefore it must be real.

I didn't think life gave one a chance to feel these feelings again, and again, and yet again... it is forgiving, if you let it be.

It sounds pathetic to think that life rations out moments like these, but it doesn't, we do.
Sometimes fate cracks that coconut of a thickening shell and lets us feel the raw temperature and pulse of life.

And then the dreams that followed. Vivid, real... I've theorized, with conviction, that in order to really be a part of me, someone, or something, has to enter my dreams. I woke up several times, comically dismissing the short narratives my cerebrum had indulged in, as reality, so that it didn't have to be real.

But when the ochre dawn arrived, there was no denying my dreams. What I don't permit myself the luxury of being in a wakened state, my vengeful dreams satiate with gusto.

The rain, my skin. Both seem impossible in the rare October heat and sun, but It's too early to share it with you, to know where it will go, to know if it is.

So someday, for someday,
talk to me like lovers do,
walk with me,
like lovers do,
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you...?

Skin on Skin

2011-07-24T00:13:00.006-04:00

The weather is a willing muse, and the warm drizzle that touched my face on my slow walk home, felt like a treasured hand I'd always known, and always missed, stroking my face, gently, sometimes in little gusts, teasing, yet present.

What is love? Is it the touch of skin on your skin as you close your eyes and sink your being into the scent and salt and hair and texture, or is it what you feel after that hand no longer rests on your face? Does love need another? Do I love you because I miss you?

Or is it [love] a question, and do we delude ourselves imagining it to be an answer...

The rain's been my companion at times like these, on such warm, dark and lovely nights. Ephemeral, yet tactile, fleeting yet committed. If it all ended tonight, I wouldn't mind. I heard the trees rustle, playing with the rain. They breathe, and I did. Long, deep breaths.

Life is about holding your head up high- not to be brave, but to be alive. It is about feeling what you feel. I wondered, with a smile, whether what I missed was what I loved, or whether the act of missing was love?

Looking back, I've never been more present than when I've been absent from myself. Let me rest my face in the cup of your hands, hold it safe, let me lie on you and feel you breathe, and in that tryst, that moment of loss, I am most who I am. I am myself in the touch of another- physical, literal, otherwise...

My heart is full tonight, and I laughed to myself, and I felt like I could cry at the same time. My heart felt so full, like it could burst, and fill the big, open night. I looked up into the rain, visible by the white city lights that it dives past. My story, though short, is rich. My skin, has memory. It remembers tears like it did the rain. It remembers you, and through that, I do too. My thoughts are playing hide and seek with me now... they play at my fingertips, but when I reach out to touch, they are no longer there. Their memory teases me, but I can't see their faces.

You remember the body that lay beside you when it is no longer there. Companions, so powerful in what they mean to you, for what they were to you when you lay beside them. Did they matter, or is it what they mean to you now that does? Both. My skin says that one could not have been without the other. When you lie at night, you are never alone, there are many that lie beside you. In my diary you are who I choose to describe you as- by name, by stories, by how I want to remember you when I need to remember you, but in my being you are what my skin felt when it touched yours. I do not feel alone. I am not alone, because my skin, once touched, never can forget.

This life, in time, will feel through its skin again, and again.... there are billions like me, skin touching skin, remembering, never forgetting, even if we think or try to, or think we aught to try to. I close my eyes. I feel the gentle breeze. I smell the scent of the rain having quenched parched soil, and it brings me back to my childhood. That too is touch. I open my eyes. Life is so very beautiful.

Note: Written after seeing Mine vaganti

Strangers on a railway platform

2011-07-10T18:58:00.001-04:00

He stands on the railway platform where we've stopped en route to Toronto, his dirty blonde hair blowing on his thinning head. A child not yet two propped in the crook of one arm, and another, a year older perhaps, holding onto his free hand. His bare legs move restlessly in his sandals, telling strangers more than he might care to share.
As the clock ticks, his face fills with worry. The children, who came in excitement to meet someone, have now directed that enthusiasm to the train.
He scans the horizon several times over. It's only been minutes, but the sky seems to have darkened.
The train begins to move on. They just stand there. Mother had decided she wasn't coming back home after all.

Being visible in my own skin

2011-06-25T02:33:00.004-04:00

Tonight was seminal in many ways. Ordinary by most measures- we had a drink, took a walk, went to a club, danced a bit, left, walked home, said goodnight, retreated to our respective lives- but I feel more visible then ever.

We were at Rangeela, an annual South-Asian fundraiser, elegantly nested (and somewhat marginalised) at the early cusp of Toronto's Pride celebrations. These were my people, or rather people like me. I didn't feel different, even though I never think I do, or so I tell myself. I recognised the music, the language, the vibe.

There is always a place you call "home" when you use the word, and I realised tonight how much more my identity finds its feet when it feels comfortable in its own skin. I realised in being visible, how invisible I can be otherwise. My community, also has a colour, and acknowledging it is a start.

Songs were played that reminded me of first blushes in my early days at University. I danced in a way that everyone else kind of did. I was no longer a minority. if I was looked at, it was for who I was, not what I was.

Race hasn't been something I've fixated on before, but for a change, 'brown' was the dominant tone in the room, and that let each of us be ourselves in ways we didn't realise we could, or rather I could...

What this may all amount to, I do not know. Like so many points in life when one stops and thinks for a moment about what one has experienced, the impact of that sliver of insight is felt at some other point of time when you least expect it to.

"Gather on the steps of stories..."

2011-06-18T00:06:00.002-04:00

I'm floating tonight... I just got back from an evening that I'll always remember. There are two authors I cherish, who weave words into the most unimaginably beautiful fabrics, who garden the universe with planets rich with stories, who make life become art, and their art becomes love...

Jeanette Winterson is one of these two. Her books have been companions in the best and worst of times. She's a philosopher, and poet, and in my opinion a sculptor of thought too. She spoke of how important poetry is to make us human. She spoke of her life, and her past, and how precious the present is. "Love is art" she said, and you have to love the inside as much as the outside. There are only three endings in her opinion, "revenge, tragedy, and forgiveness", and if we all could accept and make peace with that eventuality, we could live the present with so much more feeling, beauty and meaning. My words do not do justice to hers...

I got to speak with her afterwards, and tell her how much she meant to me and the role her words had played in my life, just like so many others' had played in hers. I gushed about how her book Written On The Body was the perfect script to have had in my hand the first time I experienced the true meaning of love. She signed the most beautiful quote on it for me (see below). Her embrace was genuine and generous.

Earlier that evening she said: "false beginnings are not the problem, false endings are". We delude ourselves into believing, and hoping to believe, that we can have cinematic endings if we work hard enough on them- accepting things for what they are, separating and removing the bitterness from the anger, knowing that we all reach an end at some time and should love our emotional present with that reality- we could be so much happier...

Her quote, from the same book it's written on, reads "I don't know if this is a happy ending, but here we are let loose in open fields..." I remember reading this, and being in love, and crying.

I am in love again. With whom or what I do not know, but I feel it, and can smell it, and can taste it in me...

In ending, I want to quote a beautiful poem she shared at the end of the evening.

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field for a while,
and gone my way

and forgotten it.
But that was the pearl

of great price,
the one field that had treasure in it.
I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it.

Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future,
nor hankering after an imagined past.
It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth once,
but is the eternity that awaits you.

-R. S. Thomas

iWalk

2011-06-15T22:39:00.001-04:00

I'm in London, Ontario. I've just come back to my room after a long walk with colleagues of mine from this course I'm at. I feel alive when I'm here, even though this City is somewhat dead. The conversations, the discussions, the utopian luxury to even have them, unpeel the patina that seals me from myself, a flake at a time. I write this tonight in an effort to remember this feeling when I return, and relive it in how I live each day. It's not an aspiration, but a reality that I cannot deny for much longer. Change is inevitable, and I've got to think of how and when it happens now, and why...

I stopped to smell the peonies in front of the campus on my way in. They were intoxicating in the darkness of the evening.

Loss

2010-09-18T13:11:00.000-04:00

What is held in the heart is never lost....

words (almost) lost

2010-09-05T23:07:00.000-04:00

I'm finally going through the unread emails in my inbox, all 629 of them, some dating back to 2005; and I find these lines from Renu as she was plugging away at her thesis in 2008...

And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now,
And perhaps without knowing it
You will live along, someday into the answers.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Lasts and Firsts

2010-07-05T10:43:00.001-04:00

I've just done my last load of laundry. On Wednesday, I'll move to my new home, and the familiar whirr and buzz of this washer-dryer duo will be replaced by another that will hopefully grow on me.

I remember going out to buy them... That was only after I'd put money aside from each pay cheque for a few years to replace the teetering top-loading antiques that came with the apartment with something 'modern'. Jack and I had scoured many stores, over many weeks (bless his patience) till serendipity (and a bit of pressure) got me to buy this set.

I feel a certain sadness closing its doors for the last time. I feel the same sadness with so many things in this home that I've come to know these past six and a half years. I remember my first trip back to India, almost 4 years after moving to Canada, and flipping the switch to turn on the lights in my old bedroom, hearing that click and being drawn to tears.

It's the associations and familiarity of that act had that mattered. That simple click was a fixture (no pun intended) of my life, and it marked a routine that had intertwined in it stories and associated feelings, the course of both significant and banal days- and yes, life itself. And while all those other intangibles will still remain with me after the switch has been replaced with another in my life, it was still an unwavering, comforting, episodic and routine punctuation in that that story that spans days and then weeks and then years...

Yes, both I and the man in the ikea advert know that they are mere objects and have no feelings, but I do...

the view from mi casa nueva

2010-07-01T07:51:00.000-04:00

Is It Just Me?

2010-05-30T00:15:00.008-04:00

you, my dear untended blog, need some lovin' and caressin' tonight... candles, soft music, and cuddling on my couch...

I saw a mushy movie at the Inside Out Film Fest earlier tonight. It wan't great by any measure- amateur actors, clichéd lines, even happy endings- but it opened up a wellspring of emotions that I thought I had packaged away nicely in the basement of my imagination. I thought I had mastered the art of denial when it came to those feelings.

Is It Just Me? captures, albeit badly, the angst I feel. I'm sure I'm not alone in this- someone did write the script, so there are at least two of us out there that have a soft spot for mush. The story was crappy- but the sub theme was all about romance, and I'm a strong advocate of more of that good stuff in a relationship.

The cowboy gets the geek because they truly connect at a personal level. That people look beyond the surface when it comes to love. That broken hearts have more room to love, and that magic isn't a one-time deal. I'd like to believe that things like that happen in real life- I might sound severely delusional, but I'm on a high, and yes, I am sober. ;-)

Are our aspirations celluloid constructs or primal yearnings? Do we dream a little dream that someone else thought up? We need more texture in our love in this world, more stories that surprise, more clouds of promise we can build castles on and hope they will not fall, or we, as a race, will kill ourselves with our own sharp slivers of cynicism.

Is there someone out there for me like I'm often promised, or is life just this delightful tease, and one day you wake up and it's over?

cancer

2010-03-21T17:24:00.002-04:00

is it not strange how common this word is becoming in our lexicon...

it is more than just me

but I am more than it will ever be

Up In The Air

2010-03-03T08:36:00.002-05:00

Life, I have learned over the past year of my life,
is not ours to give or take, to keep or give up,
it is only ours to live...

Live it with truth, beauty, and
With love, always

Love hurts, but nobody ever loses in love.

2010-02-05T23:07:00.003-05:00

My friend Barbara from Napoli would always tell me, when she'd read my mind on my face- "you feel, therefore you live". Feel, and live.

Things happen when you know the peripheries of your own skin, love the boundaries of your emotions, and forget the limits of possibility...

(excerpted from an email I sent a friend earlier today)

Bladerunner

2010-01-28T13:37:00.002-05:00

Mohammedali Road, Mumbai.

Un muelle con una vista del mar...

2010-01-26T04:47:00.002-05:00

This is the view from the porch at the Radio Club where we had lunch this afternoon...

Counting down to dusk...

2010-01-25T11:17:00.000-05:00

The attached picture is one of Mumbai's many famous landmarks. A neo-gothic wonder that rivalled anything the empire had back home- the Rajabai Clock Tower on the Bombay University campus. Rumour has it that they closed it off a few decades ago when it turned into a suicide magnet for students who did not fare that well in their exams.

The maidan (field) in the foreground, now cricket central, was once the vast open areas the Brits cultivated around their forts to have clear firing range on any attackers. Ironically the university was built on the footprint of the fort's walls, and the expanse of open space, once Bombay's lungs and emerald jewels, has been whittled into irrelevance by generations of land grabs, corruption and negligence.

Behind where I stand and take this picture stood a row of fine Art Deco apartments, now renovated into nouveau riche hell.

I decided to let my legs take me around the City today and walked and walked for a few hours along familiar routes, tracing the veins on the body of this city, breathing in its scents (loaded with nostalgia and emotions) as only a lover could. I touch with my nose, and today was like wrestling in/with every sense.

I'm home now. I washed myself down. The water was black with urban grime, my skin feels alive again, and my heart is very full.

I miss this City of my youth immensely, but is it the same place any more, and could I belong here again?

Sights in the City

2010-01-20T11:57:00.002-05:00

I promised a few pictures...

A bit disturbing today. I decided to take a walk through the old Crawford Market and it's surrounds. Here's the transcript of a chat I had a bit later with a friend.

TM: am a little shaken today- saw a group of street kids tearing a little puppy apart... we're breeding animals in this smokestack... how can the future every be bright?

Friend: oh, there's work to be done, all right. Makes me wonder if staying in the ivory tower and working toward a phd is the way i want to spend my twenties/prepare for a career and a life...

TM: the water will reach our feet sooner or later... the ivory tower does give perspective though that's hard to find if you're on the ground. I'm getting a bit tired of people telling me "you'll get used to it"- it's a danger to start getting indifferent about things that matter

Friend: yes, i don't really want to get "used to it"

A grounding, but is it a wake up call?

A heartening message from Renu though soon after... "A couple of weeks ago I saw a 10-12 year old girl, a ragged street kid, run across a road and dodge the traffic to pick up a puppy that had wandered into traffic. She scooped the pup up in her arms and hugging it closely she ran to the median."

There is hope yet.

silver sliver moons

2010-01-17T13:44:00.003-05:00

sat by the sea this evening
and watched the sliver of a moon gently settle on the edge of the world,
where a dark sea met the smouldering sky...

Yay! No more nukes...

2010-01-15T21:23:00.005-05:00

(Thanks for the title quote jB)

Yes, I do not have to undergo radioactive iodine ablation (RAI). The new guidelines (which I'd scrutinised on a hammock in Mexico) had me and my former multifocal carcinomas on the edge of knife and my endocrinologist and I discussed it carefully and decided to say no to nuking me. Thank you G for deconstructing the research jargon and everyone else who helped me make sense of the issue since my operation in September.

Besides the increased risks to other primary cancers and medical conditions (including leukaemia, brain cancer, dry mouth and even infertility) that it would have put me at, it would also have set off radioactive detectors at airports which, as other RAI recipients have shared, is not a pleasant experience and warrants a thorough checking and carrying letters from doctors with oneself as well as the hope that airport authorities will believe them.

No more doctors or hospitals (if I can help it). We now track and monitor and do some baseline tests and see what life holds.

I'm writing this from my friend Janki's guest room in Dubai en route to India for a short trip. I stopped here to see her and her family after missing out on her warmth and love for over 5 years now. We went to university together, she shared Orion with me in those halcyon days, and she's been both guru and friend in different parts of my life as we've both gone through our respective travails in life.

It's an interesting city. A constructed civilisation in every sense, and yet when Siddharth drove me on the dunes yesterday, and when we stopped at a camel farm and the owner invited us in to observe the regal beats, I couldn't help but touch the soul of something calmer and more enduring that lies beneath the ostentatious glitter and now stale glamour.

I fly on to India this afternoon for two weeks to visit the family.

I'm flying solo again... We are essentially born and die alone, and though we may share different journeys on this path that is life, we must also learn to make peace with walking parts of the way by ourselves. These have been 11 wonderful months. I could not have weathered the past year without G- the love, the patience, the quiet strength, humour and warmth. I owe G much, and while there is some sadness now, the relationship still endures, as does the love, just manifested differently in the future as something less than lovers, and more than just friends.

More as the days pass. Thanks for reading. Keep smiling, keep shining.

wishes for the new year

2010-01-02T08:38:00.002-05:00

with all that 2009 brought me,
it brought me so much,
if I had to live that year again,
I wouldn't change a thing
lest any part of it be left out of my life
and my learnings
and love...

best wishes for the new year to all and any
may it bring us all health, happiness and hope...

The circle closes, for now...

2009-12-07T23:16:00.006-05:00

What a wonderful end to my stay... I got back a little while ago. I feel like the trip has come to a natural close after an eventful (for myself) last few days. The radio in the taxi back from town was playing "when I need love, I hold out my hands and I touch..." Thank you for being there these past days.

We (a small group of 4, the driver and our really great guide) left early early this morning for the Sian Ka'an reserve. A two hour drive later we found that the naturalist who was supposed to lead our kayaking tour through the mangroves hadn't shown, nor had our kayaks... But it didn't matter one bit. This area is a little patch of paradise. So we drove on another two hours, got on a little boat just for the 5 of us and spent most of the day on open water- sea turtles, flamingos, star fish, diving into the white-sanded blue. The dolphins gave us a miss, but so did the crocodiles. It didn't matter.

The sea was something else. The grounding, ironically out in the middle of the sea on the reef, even more so.

I just popped into a store in town to pick treats for the puppies. I left my bank card in the atm (thanks for cancelling it Geoff). I'm hungry. But it doesn't matter. I'm full!

I leave here with a sense of understanding. I know why I was supposed to come, why I was meant to be alone, why I needed to feel why I felt, and why I've learned what I have (my little secret) before I return.

And the puppies... They've been giving this early riser company every morning as I watch the sun rise. They've found where my room is and actually climb the stair ladder and wait for me outside my door. They also tore the black coral I found on the beach (and had left to dry) to bits... But I can't really blame them.

Orion

2009-12-06T21:36:00.003-05:00

I walked down to the water to say goodnight to the ocean. I have to be up early for my kayaking trip...
... and there he was, my eternal companion, Orion- right in front of me, circled by clouds as if to show only his bright figure, always present, steadfast... I'm not alone.
A line in the book I'm reading quotes Dante speaking of God... "The love that moves the sun and the stars"...

A watershed moment by the sea

2009-12-06T12:51:00.002-05:00

(No pun intended in the title of this post)
Today has been somewhat of a watershed. I know why I came here... I realised it while half crying, making patterns in the sand while the sea licked my toes. I'm a child again. This is where I went to escape.

The sea was my friend. It came up to me when I walked to it, it comforted me, it made me feel power and servitude, it played with me when I was most alone, it was always there. It hid mysteries, it was never simple, it loved me unconditionally, it had taste, it had temper, it was an enigma...

It's disconcerting, because I've shed all my armour and defences that I've developed to cope over these past decades when I sat beside it today. I'm naked, bare, alive... That's why I'm scared, but it's also a chance to renew, and remember.

If a bird the size of my palm can make sense of it all as it feeds on the same shore that I sit on, why can't I?

David pointed out to me earlier today- we all came from the sea, every living thing made it's way from the oceans. If there is a source of life, it is the sea.

Shifting sands...

2009-12-05T21:51:00.002-05:00

I just stood out in the warm sea for I don't know how long.

And meditated, emanating the primal sound of the breath, my chest gently vibrating, half expecting a whale to answer me.

The sandy sea bed felt firmer than the dry ground. I feel like a child again. This is the unforgiving sea, that nurtured me, and now in this phase of uncertainty, it's ironically the bedrock of my being.

Perhaps this is why I came here, perhaps this is what I was meant to know. Perhaps this is why it is time for me to return. Perhaps it was always written this way...

running away!

2009-11-29T11:30:00.002-05:00

I leave next week for (almost, but not quite) a week near the sea, in the sun.

I'll be staying at the idyllic Rancho Sak Ol, in Puerto Morelos (thanks for the recommendation of the town Koo).

It's a small fishing village a half hour south of Cancun. What it's not is an all-inclusive pit of suburban whining and entitled excess which I have no interest in going to.

I need this time away to regroup and recharge. I plan to read, play with the dog (who is purported to own the place), eat, sleep, and most of all enjoy my time with the ocean that I miss so very much. In many ways this place reminds me (and already smells like) my childhood weekends in Juhu.

The weather there (to turn those of you who are in North America green with envy) is a calm 26C as I write this in chilly Toronto.

On bullies...

2009-11-14T19:07:00.003-05:00

I've seen my fair share of them, and tonight some more. On the train downtown, I saw a man bully his own child. Sick...

This lovely boy, not yet 6, got on with his mum and this man. He was playing with his trains, and like most kids do, entertained himself. The man kept threatening the mother that she should have left the kid with her parents, that if the kid didn't behave the night was off and they were going home, that he was misbehaving, that the kid was the reason their relationship wasn't going to work.

The child sat between them through all of this, slowly shrinking, getting still, wanting to be invisible. The mother kept fawning over the weasly excuse of a man. He did interrupt his rant to call a friend when the train surfaced briefly to tell him he was "out with his girl" and that he'd bet 40 on three games. And then he started picking on the child.

We all sat still, involved yet not. I'm angry, at the man, but even more at myself. I glared a few times, but I should have said something. Would it have changed the child's life if I'd confronted this man, or made it worse?

I wanted to tell that child he'd be ok. His sadness hurt more than the man's words. The little boy shared a smile with me as I left the train.

We can't let this happen, not to innocent children, but it does. Everywhere, everyday.

Change starts with ourselves. Starting tomorrow I'm going to sign up with Big Brothers and maybe I'll make a difference if there is a kid who needs me.

I've been given so very much in this life. Unconditional love and support from my amazing parents and siblings. Friends who are firmer than any firmament.

Before my time is up, I'm going to make sure I give back too...

Serenity prayer

2009-11-10T17:26:00.002-05:00

"grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change,
the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference..."

I'd heard this many times before, but I learned the meaning of it last night.

without expectation, there is no disappointment or frustration

2009-11-07T22:21:00.002-05:00

My life changed today. This wasn't a fireworks moment, or an epiphany, just a gentle drawing open of curtains, and a revelation of the heart...

Serendipitously, I attended a day-long meditation retreat with my friend Bryan on a beautiful campus in Guelph earlier today. I've been searching for some time now for a structured form of meditation to calm the storm I realise I'm in, but instead it found me. Bryan mentioned him going there in passing last week, and I’m not sure if I invited myself, or he did me, but hesitatingly something in me knew I needed to be there. Thank you Bryan. Thank you Molly...

The first half of my silent day was marked by frustration. My attempts to focus on my body and breathing seemed futile. I was conscious of a searing pain in my neck, that more firmly seeded my lingering fears that the cancer had not left me, and this fed on itself and ferreted out my darkest fears of illness and death. The walking meditation that was inserted into our sitting sessions helped to focus on the movement of my legs and diminish the pain, but they too seemed a distraction from something else.

After lunch we had a chance to break our silence for a bit and speak to Molly. I spoke about the pain, and the hurt I felt, and my frustration with my inability to find that silence and meditate. Gently, she explained to me that I always had the pain, it was only that I had now allowed myself to feel it. We're so lost in the crazy lives we live that we never have time to listen to ourselves, and our bodies, till they grow and grow and jump up on us. She told me not to call it "pain", but a feeling, and not to focus on it, or I'd lock it in... (not in her words, but paraphrased closely) find its edges, they may be fluid, they may be fixed, find its centre, find where it is, don't push it away or pull it in, or distance what you feel and think around it, just know it for what it is and massage it, move gently over it as a wave, it, like so much of life it too is impermanent, and it is here only for now, and if you know it as that, it will be what it is, that.

A fellow traveller asked about her own pain, and frustration at not being able to meditate, to find that peace she sought... (Molly again)... expectation is the source of frustration. If we don't expect, we won’t be disappointed. (That’s true for relationships of any kind, but few of us recognise it). Accept what comes, and embrace it. If there are distractions that enter, embrace and acknowledge them, find humour and surprise in the surreal thoughts that show themselves, sometimes you will find the focus- for hours, for days, for seconds, sometimes never. Don't treat the times you do as success and the times you don't as failure or you are setting yourself up. Recognise it, and don’t even go there. Accept what comes...

The rest of the afternoon was very different. I found incredible space and silence in my mind and heart. The pain was no longer pain but something I felt, not overpowering as it had been earlier. Each breath was acknowledged, each distraction entertained, each moment felt like both a second and a lifetime.

Molly ended the day leading and guiding us to open our hearts to others, to ourselves, to the world- to offer love, support, wish goodness and take away harm and pain- by doing so we could not judge anyone because through generosity and kidness, we were one with them. I left the retreat a different man.

Those who know me well will cock and eyebrow and wonder what's happening. Just life finding its flow. Fate or luck? I do not know, but the path I walked today is one I was meant to...

p.s. a few of you have asked why I yanked the last post. C called it "maudlin", and for good reason too. It was a manifestation of the pain I've been holding in. I'll post that sad, hurting piece of text below, because it no longer matters... well it matters, but it’s not all that I feel… it too is impermanent, and I contextualise it with the recognition that I have so very much and so very many people and love in my life to be thankful for, to feel lucky for.

anchors of our existence...

Posted: 05 Nov 2009 07:27 PM PST

Do we really stand on our own, or are there hands that unknowingly hold us up? It's a strange night tonight. All the hands that have held me up over the past years are coincidentally (or serendipitously?) absent - on trips away, on distant shores, out of coverage, voice mails for proxies, or just absent.

I feel incredibly lonely and sad- and that's not a bad thing. We're meant to feel... to feel means to live. It takes a trough to know a crest.

I walked home tonight to an empty home- not because there was nobody or nothing in it, but because it felt just the way it had for the past 6 years, with just me in it. Life doesn't feel as forgiving as it used to. I'm very aware tonight of my mortality and my fears. I'm very aware that I may not have too much time left, and what have I got to show for what I had?

I wanted babies once. A family of my own to nurture. Change that comes only with sharing. Expectations that with time, some constance would replace the flux. And while life's been full and rich with each day that's peeled away, it's lacked some of those anchors of existence and allow one to root, to belong, to know oneself and be known. I feel that the wind could blow me away, and apart from grief, I'd leave little behind...

This isn't a cry for help or sympathy. Just a recognition tonight, as the moon starts to wane, that I can feel...

mum's heading back to India

2009-10-25T22:36:00.000-04:00

Mum left to fly back to India today. Right now I miss her very, very much...
The house seems empty. It's going to be different waking up tomorrow and she's not here. I couldn't have done this without her. She flew in just before the operation and stayed till she knew I'd be all right. As 'old' as I am, I'll always be her baby.

Over the past weeks she has nursed me back to health, been patient with me like only a mother can, and we've been able to spend some good time together too. I'm lucky, very, very lucky to have a mother that wonderful.

A Faustian Bargain

2009-10-21T20:40:00.004-04:00

I've been silent because I've been somewhat occupied with matters at hand. I'll elaborate on it at length, but recent meetings with the specialists have brought up a few surprises and questions. Given that I had two slightly different cancers on either lobe, there is no definite solution to what happens next. Were either to have been found alone or just any one that was the size of both put together, it would not merit radioactive iodine treatment. However with two, I fall into a grey zone and the default diagnosis is to err on the side of caution and nuke!

What's not that clear however is the longer-term effects of the radiation in creating altogether new cancers with implications far more severe than the one I hope I've gotten rid of. The risks, though small, are present, and the choice is mine to make.

Do I treat what I have with every means possible and worry about the future, or do I take a gentler approach now, risk recurrence, and cross my fingers that I've walked a safer path? Something between a Catch 22 deal and a Faustian bargain if ever there was one...

So I look to science. I'm immersed in reading academic papers on the subjects of mortality and morbidity related to thyroidectomies, radioactive iodine ablation and their effects and results. Geoff and Jason's epidemiological training have been invaluable in understanding the meaning of 'significance', and Karen's found me the papers I need to read (I'll list them and a more detailed discussion in a future post as a resource for others travelling this road). I feel like a researcher these days, not a patient... the information empowers, or does it delude?

"All that philosophy can teach,
The lore of jurist and of leech,
I've mastered, ah! and sweated through
Theology's dead deserts, too,
Yet here, poor fool! for all my lore,
I stand no wiser than before."

- Goethe, (Faust's words in Faust: A Tragedy)

And yes, the hormone levels have begun to rise since I started on the new dose. I don't feel like a zombie any more. Monday was a challenge at the office, but today was degrees better. One step at a time, one day at a time...

Quit soy

2009-10-15T09:01:00.001-04:00

I've just poured my last container down the sink until I know more. I'm in the midst of doing a lot of research about the efficacy of the radioactive iodine treatment that I have to make a decision on, and it's turning up a lot of interesting information.

The last few days have not been great. I'll address them in a subsequent post, but from what I've learned so far, and this is pure speculation (but not an absurd hypothesis either), that my increased use of soy over the past year, in an effort to be healthier, may have been the cause of this sorry saga.

The Controversy Over Soy and Thyroid Health

Ageing in situ

2009-10-12T09:10:00.006-04:00

In another week I'll be back at work, testing my ability to resume where I left off, but I know things will have changed and I'm not going back to where I was, literally or metaphorically. As Heraclitus said many centuries ago, “You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you”- I may step back into the same river, but the water in the river would have flowed on and will be different, and so will I.

I can sense my relationship with my synthetic thyroid hormones will not be an easy one. Yes, I was warned about it, but that doesn't make it easier. Differences from the datum either mean inadequacy or excess. As the artificial substance replaces my natural store, a process that will be near complete in another week, I can feel its impact. I sense it is lower than what I need- my skin is dry and tight, even when lavished with moisturisers; my infamous stubble takes days to surface (it used to just take hours); and most of all is my energy which is plumbing new lows.

I have a new-found respect, sincerely, for the process of ageing. I do feel trapped- my mind knows it can do so much more, but the body will not. I want to walk faster, but I just cannot. I know I could run on the treadmill just a month ago, but my body just cannot. I want to make my love laugh on the phone when I chat at night like I used to be able to and all I think I can muster is banal, tired niceties that would bore anyone- and I wish I could change that, to say that I will be my old self again in a few months, but I just cannot because I don't know when.

It's suffocating. It's terrifying. Watching the life you knew sit just beyond your grasp, and you're being forced to live another one because of the little pink pill you have to consume in the morning. Yes, there's some virtue to taking things slower and appreciating the scenery and not just the walk, but something inside of me is screaming, is crying, because it knows that this is not my datum but an imposed one. I'm paralysed even though I can move.

Hopefully the experts will help me up my dose and reclaim some of what I've lost, and find more to build on. I shared some of my angst with Des the other night- he looked at me and asked whether it had occurred to me that the rest of the world may actually function the way I now did, and what I was now was actually normal. I shuddered; I'd never looked at it that way... Can I make peace with something I have not chosen for myself?

Thanksgiving weekend just drew to a close in Canada. My mum and I are visiting friends do get some time away from my small downtown apartment. I have so much to be thankful for. The last weeks have magnified some friendships and differentiated others. My family and friends have been pillars of strength even as my own crumbled. I've learned to know myself better too- not an easy relationship!

I’m needy right now, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Lost in this limbo, I can only know myself through the people that know me. Who I am to you helps me remember me. I cling to words of reassurance like a man hanging off the edge of a cliff, with just those words to hold me from finding what the bottom feels like... I can tell myself it will be all right, but you help me believe it.

My mind does look back and ask if I could have changed things. I rarely indulge hindsight, but on this one matter I have. Cancer or a life less lived? What a choice to have to make...

I got to shower today

2009-10-06T11:31:00.000-04:00

I showered! Hardly newsworthy, but after 2 long weeks I risked running water on me, and it felt wonderful! I doubt the seams will open again and spill blood, but I still need to be careful. Just that. With a week's stubble shaved off and a full body bath to boot, I look like the old me!

Cards that say it all!

2009-10-02T22:30:00.004-04:00

This card from Barb which I got today is perfect! Irreverent, topical, and had me in splits. Geoff was joking just a few days ago about how my mum should get me a dog cone with a bit of a 'zap' feature on it to check me if I wandered too far from my bed or moved my neck more than I should (because I was).

the stitches are out, and hopefully the cancer is too...

2009-10-01T16:32:00.004-04:00

The stitches came out today. Taking the dressing off hurt more than the stitches, but with one little snip I was stitch-less. I thought there would be blood and gore, but it's just a neat little line. A bit swollen, somewhat sore, and once it's healed I'll buy you a drink if you can tell it apart from my wrinkles.

The results of the pathology were hardly a surprise- cancer all right, and then some. Unlike the ultrasounds that had shown suspicious cellular activity on just one lobe, both lobes of my thyroid had cancerous nodules- one a piece (it's all about equity). I'm glad I listened to the surgeon when she said something to the effect of 'get the entire thyroid out or you'll always be worrying about what's happening with the other half'. The "dominant" tumour (1 cm) on the left lobe of papillary type, and secondary tumour (0.7 cm) on the right lobe of papillary carcinoma, follicular variant. As much as we might have wanted to hear something else (e.g. "cancer, no way! did we really say that?") this is what I expected. It could have been far worse. The tumours were localised within the thyroid and there was no sign of them having spread to the lymph nodes. They were significant enough to warrant radiation (stay tuned) and they couldn't have been found a day sooner. I'm a lucky man, if I didn't know it already.

The next steps are at least 2 more weeks of rest as the underlying tissue and fabric of my being heal. No heavy lifting (of the physical kind) for a few weeks. No sun and lots of sunscreen on that part of my neck for about a year. A slew of appointments with the surgeon, and endocrinologists over the next weeks and months to prep for the radiation and 'titrate' the levels of hormone in my body to readjust my datums to those of the person you used to know before all of this came to be.

I thought I had a steady hand and could stitch and cut a mean few centimetres of cloth, but looking at the precision and perfection with which the surgeons have done their work, I'm in awe!

sleeping again

2009-09-28T09:50:00.000-04:00

A quick update from the trenches. I've had two nights of reasonably good sleep now, and actually managed to sleep on my side. Mum's making sure I can't get up to mischief and keeps me on a close leash at home. I'm swallowing like a fish again, enjoying food and a steady stream of good company that's been the high point of all of this!

I've started my medication that will be a fixture of the rest of my life. It's going to take some getting used to. The pain from the surgical cuts is diminishing. My neck turns more than it used to. All eyes on Thursday.

Thank you for all the well wishes, emails, calls, visits, food and there's so much chocolate here that I could open a store, so come and help me finish it or I'll be at St Mike's again, but this time with cocoa shock! ;-)

I'm home sans the thyroid (unat*)

2009-09-25T08:00:00.007-04:00

They sent me back home last night, almost 36 hours after I left here all scrubbed for surgery. It went well I heard. Thrice the time it should have, and nobody bothered to tell mum, Geoff, Khadi, Kaaeed and Jack when it was done, why it took so long and what happened. All questions to be asked at next week's sutures removal.

I'm grateful to those of you who didn't follow my diktats. Seeing your faces and hearing your voices as I drifted in and out of consciousness kept me feeling positive. Mum kept me updated on all the calls and caring queries. I do remember holding your hands and I remember your scent. It was near midnight when I awoke to the delirium.

What followed will probably be the longest night of my life. I'd sleep for what seemed like hours and wake up to see the clock (that had insensitively been fixed on the wall in front of the bed), had only moved a minute. I'd be awake and nauseous and in pain for what seemed like hours and the hand only moved a few minutes, sometimes seconds. I spent the night awake, in a whirlpool of fear and exhaustion, trying to focus on the poster Geoff had drawn and pinned on the wall, and not on the 30min visits the nurses made to measure the girth of my neck. They picked every vein in my body, either for the IV or to take blood again and again and again.

Still, I'm alive and they say it went well. (Kaaeed took this picture the morning after, it's rumoured that I was high on morphine). That's what matters. I also realise how horribly selfish I must sound. Every woman who undergoes a C Section must awake to this sort of pain. Kids often have to go through series of these and don't have a choice. I can't diminish my own pain, but I must remember it is always relative.

Healing will take some time. I smell, I'm not allowed to bathe and my stomach HURTS. Swallowing, even my own saliva, feels like sipping crushed glass. I'm trying to avoid the T3 but I had to take one last night. I have this fear that my sutures will burst open if I lie the wrong way. DQ or what?

Unfortunately I cannot sing as I thought I might (and couldn't before either). My voice is the same, though a bit stunned and raspy. The parathyroids survived. I find out what the full biopsy uncovered in a week. I had a short cry last night. I'm lucky. The worst is over though (I hope).

* ask Geoff

going under the knife

2009-09-22T22:28:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow is the big day- my "Total Thyroidectomy". Bruce Willis couldn't do a movie with as much of a zing in the title, and there wont be a sequel.

I've been flooded with calls and good thoughts and I go into this feeling very, very loved. Even people who only knew about the op in passing weeks ago remembered the date. I'm humbled and touched by their thoughtfulness.

My mum's here, and so is Khadi, and I'm glad they are. Geoff's coming in on the night bus and I'm really glad he didn't pay heed to my protestations. My sister sends her love from the salt flats en route to Brasil. My dad and brother have been incredibly supportive. Ariadne, David, Jack, Michael, Anisa, Des, Karen, Melanie, Linh... Tony giving me a few inches of slack and a lot of spine at our morning workouts. I've pushed a lot of people away too so that I could have space, please don't hold that against me. People who knew me growing up, people who I thought hardly knew me, they've all been incredibly supportive. It feels like an Oscar speech. I'm missing names, lots of names, in the rush of this blog post- people I'm indebted to.

I can be a drama queen, and I have. I've forced all those around me to not express emotion and cheated them of that outlet so that I could focus my own. I've kept this a secret so that I could coast in a necessary realm of denial. In truth, I cannot do anything, only the surgeon can. My exaggerated calm is my lifeboat right now.

This isn't supposed to be risky. This is supposed to be simple. As cancers go, if one could choose, I have the best one, and it's rare to ;-)

But I'm very aware right now of my mortality... I'm cognizant of the fact that there is a chance that I may not be here at this hour tomorrow. Aware that the years in my life have a number, however small or big. I do not have to wait for this to pass to realise how important all of you who read this are to me. I do not have to wake up after my surgery to know what I have yet to do before my time is up. I do not need to wait to tell the people I love that I love them, and I shall not- now, or ever again.

My voice will be different when this is done, and my agent's beaten Whitney's to a record deal for me already. Stay tuned...

Nine months later...

2009-09-17T22:30:00.005-04:00

It's done. After vacillating endlessly over the past nine months , I competed for, was offered, and accepted the role of Manager of the Growth Planning and Analysis Team of the Ontario Growth Secretariat at the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure... (what a mouthful!). D loves to say it with one big intake of a breath.

As Rilke beautifully says, the future enters us and transforms us long before we know it (see quote below)... change has come to me in that way. As I began to feel satiated with one course of study or work, the other seemed ready to begin and open up to me- architecture, on to urban design, then strategic planning... my life too, my identity, my sexuality, my relationships... moving, building, constantly evolving, ever better, ever stronger, never with regret, always with promise, never having to leave one to take on another.

Mentors have often put me in positions to challenge me and I've performed. Lovers, friends and family have held me to higher standards and I've risen to the occasion. I feel like a puppet in many ways, yet I know it is I that did it and nobody else. I look back and owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to so many people who had faith in me, and more importantly, gave me the chance and had the patience to let me find it in myself... thank you.

"It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate." - Rainer Maria Rilke

feeling loved...

2009-09-14T22:19:00.000-04:00

I'm saving voicemails, cards, emails... I feel loved. I've never doubted that, nor have I ever counted it, lest I take it for granted, but in these trying times, the faith that people have in me, the genuine support and love I've received, have amazed me.

It's true, I've kept all of this a secret, as best I can. As I said in an earlier post, it wasn't to hide the truth, but to save myself the task of constantly explaining it. If you asked, I shared, and only just, but not otherwise. I'm exhausted from the medical jargon and minutiae I've been thrust into, and I crave the normalcy I had just a month ago, so that I can focus on living life, and not resenting it.

I am nothing without the lives that intersect mine. When I do have to go, as we all must, I will not be remembered for what I take with me, but for what I leave behind. It will be about what I've shared, tough and easy times, laughs, good solid cries... you've all held me to higher standards when the lower rungs of a ladder looked so tempting, you've all expected more from me when I mediocrity offered an easier way, you've all loved me unconditionally when I know I could have hated myself, and you've never given up on me, and I'm not going to do that either.

If I could, I'd have had all of you at every doctor's appointment, every biopsy, every needle prick, every form I had to fill... and you were all there, even if you didn't know it. Dr A says I have at least 50 years ahead of me if I want them. Consider yourselves warned, I'm not going anywhere...

I love you all.

It's all about perspective...

2009-09-14T21:50:00.001-04:00

I've felt terribly vainglorious over the past week. In addition to wanting to use that word since I learnt it many moons ago, I did actually feel that way. My new-found secret makes me feel I'm special. I've joked (half-seriously) that I should use my lil' lump of cancer to get ahead in the line. Why me? Because I have this, I need to be compensated for it... it's not an uncommon reaction to the weight of a diagnosis of cancer. ...G and my ever-patient friends quickly hid their shock at my crass humour.

But quickly-enough, this past weekend, reality bit. As I walked down my street, I passed a kid, not yet past his teens, pushing his mother in a wheelchair. She was in hospital garb, paralysed, a beautiful face that adored him, twisted into a stasis she may never be able to shake. Her arms lay limp beside her. Yet when the sun fell on her face, her smile glowed brighter than the light that it was bathed in.

I'm fortunate, no, I'm very fortunate, and I need to be thankful for what I have in life. Friends, my health (even with this), my senses, friends, family, an education, the safety of a home of my own in a county second to none. If she can smile into the warmth of the sunshine, why should I ever have reason to complain?

M, in one of his patient conversations with me, counselled me that while problems are always relative, we shouldn't use that as a reason to trivialise our own. We all struggle with degrees, and one man's molehill can be another's mountain. But in truth, mine is small, and I need to remember that and live my life fully for myself, because I can...

I think I'm in good hands (pun intended)

2009-09-13T21:29:00.001-04:00

I spent most of Friday in the pre-op clinic at the hospital, being probed by a litany of medical investigations- anaesthesiologists, nurses, the blood-sucker lady (who had the sweetest smile), residents who didn't know my thyroid from my little finger, and some great doctors with a sense of humour and a message of reassurance. My lil' lump hurt that whole day and the next from all the pressing, but at least I know where it is now, and so do they!

On this occasion, I'm going to leave it in the hands of the experts. I can't worry, because I know little about what they do, but I hope I am in good hands... ;-)

Woke up scared

2009-09-10T08:40:00.003-04:00

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning, terribly, terribly frightened. Unlike most of my dreams that have a fantastical plot in play, this one was bereft of any story. Just dread, just fear. I put myself back to sleep, I've gotten good at that.

My mortality is very present these days. Two weeks from now I may not be on this chair outside the Hart House, basking in the gentle dawn as the city crawls up to its regular, banal pace. Two weeks from now I may not be here... but for now I'm trying to be present, trying to be here, enjoying my health, my relationships, my life, every placid moment of these...

Turning into a statistic

2009-09-07T00:17:00.001-04:00

Becoming a statistic has never been easier. When they found the 'growths' on my thyroid, I was told that barely 3-5% of them are ever cancerous. Of course, you hope you're part of that lumpy 95-97% and go home and sleep well. Lo and behold, when my biopsy results came back, I was part of that 3-5%. Now they tell me that 95% of those who test positive will be fully cured and live their normal life spans. I have my fingers crossed that I will not be that poor f***er who was the 3% of the 3% of the 3% who had to die that year to make the numbers work! I've never felt more important...

And how it all began... my romantic tryst with cancer

2009-09-06T23:51:00.002-04:00

It started with a cold a few months ago. Perhaps the kind kids bring home from their daycare to their parents to carry back to the office. Perhaps something more virulent that birds carry over distances. But still, a cold...

Vainly (and unashamedly at that), it was the double chin I noticed in my recent pictures that set the alarm bells ringing. "I've gotten fat, look at these pictures" I complained, early and often to the very patient G. In true cherubic form, he'd disagree. But when the ache that I woke up with each morning did not dissipate, I decided to go to the doctor. My own GP Dr D prescribed heartburn medication. The second GP Dr S at the clinic in my office building told me I was talking too much, which wasn't an impossible diagnosis. A return visit to my own GP Dr D had him prescribing an anti-fungal mouthwash to deal with the problem.

After two more months of knowing that there was definitely something more happening, I chanced a visit to the walk-in clinic by my office. A particularly alert Dr R after hearing about my fruitless visits to doctors and actually believing my oft-related complaint ordered a few tests and an ultrasound to see what was going on. Isn't that what doctors should have been doing?

A few days later I came back to find they had discovered three nodules on my thyroid, one of them especially suspect in its size and texture. Two weeks later a visit to the lovely, patient endocrinologist Dr M-P, two weeks after that a biopsy, and two weeks after a diagnosis of cancer.

Needless to say my head was in a ruthless spin. Even as I tried to do my own research, work kept its unrelenting claim on my time. Within days I'd seen a surgeon Dr A who wanted the entire thyroid out. Within a few days of navigating complex medical jargon (which not a single one of my Drs took the time to explain), and with much help and counsel from those near and dear to me who were privy to these events in my life, I decided I could part with my thyroid and face what came next. Fortuitously, they think they found the cancer early. The surgery is scheduled for September 23, 2009.

It's here that my blog begins, with two weeks to go before I go under the knife. Naturally, my writing isn't going to be about the cancer, but about me. For those who think "cancer" is a scary word (and I was one of them), in truth if one could wish for a cancer, this thyroid-style dish would be what one would want. Thyroid cancers have the highest success rate and a surgical solution holds the best promise.

A true diagnosis of what kind of cancer it is and whether it has spread cannot be made until the butterfly-like thyroid (that sits just under the adam's apple on a man's throat) is removed and biopsied... but there's no point worrying about that eventuality because there isn't much I can do about it till we reach that step. Unlike my stocks, and my interests in urbanism, more effort to solve this problem will not make for a more successful end result because it is what it is, and the answer lies not in my hands, but a surgeons'.

I apologise to those of you who feel they should have known sooner for not telling you. I needed to stay focussed on myself, to stay calm and composed and continue with life because this tumour was not going to get the better of me. I was tired of explaining the medical intricacies of the situation. I did not have the energy to reassure others who felt genuinely distressed, and wipe away their tears, because I needed to make sure I could tame my own. I did not have room for drama and emotion when I was trying to keep my own natural theatrical instincts at bay... I'm grateful to G, D, M and my family for their steadfast support, and respecting this wish.

My intention is to share through future blog posts some of the very interesting insights, and the demi-romance that this cancer has stirred in me. I cannot claim to have had a wake-up call, because I think I was quite awake already and nothing I could have done differently would have changed this... but it has definitely given me a fresh perspective on how fragile life can be... that every raindrop that touches this head is the first, and when it falls I trace its pattern down my face to its inevitable end in the ocean that I miss so very much...