Dear
you,
Why is it so difficult to pick up writing when we've been away from it
for a while? There are times that words seem to flow out endlessly, that I
can't find enough hours in the day to put pen to paper (or less
romantically, fingers to keyboard). And then there are days, weeks,
months, when the spring dries up, and when confronted with that endless
blank white paper, I run screaming. I knit, I draw, I cook, I arrange the
sliced tomatoes beautifully on the plate, fresh
basil, green olive oil and
brown vinegar, but I have no words.
In
Something in Season, Brendon talks about the fallow time for
writing - perhaps we all need a winter, for the overtaxed soil of our
wordminds to just absorb the world around us, but not attempt to put
anything out. People ask me why Jim's salad is so good - my answer is
often that his farm has been
organic for over 30 years. The soil is
happy, which I realize is ridiculous anthropomorphism. But places
always have a tangible feeling to me - happy, dry, ancient, fierce. One of
the reasons I love walking around on the
Laurentian shield - this ancient
piece of rock, even the trees seem young when compared to the bare rock
bones of the earth where they emerge.
I know, I know, I'm hopping all over the place. One of the hazards of
not writing for a while, I have too many loose and feathery ideas floating
around in my head, and they are all interconnected, but I have trouble
sticking with one theme.
Have you noticed that even though it's still summer, it's a new
season? Remember, my year has five - summer is ending, harvest season has
begun. That sneaky tang in the air, the promise of crisp apples and cooler
nights.
So how am I going to connect a fallow wordmind, overtaxed soil, and the
granite underneath the great lakes? I'm probably not - I know you will
fill in the interstices.
It's odd being a cancer survivor. There was a time that I literally
felt as though I was most of the way on the other side of the
veil. There
was a day during chemotherapy that I remember distinctly. We were visiting friends up in the Capay
valley, enjoying their new pool.
Wertperch and the
imp were cavorting in
the pool, I was looking out from the porch. I couldn't have been more than
100 feet away. But it was as though there was a thick layer of glass in between us - I
stood there, unable to walk the distance to the pool, and I wondered to
myself if I would ever get to be alive again, like they were. This is the
walking death of cancer treatment. The euphemism is "quality of life", but
you know what I mean. The treatment kills you part of the way, just
hopefully not all of the way.
It's only within the last few months that I realize that I have come
back to the living. I was down visiting Therese. Well, visiting might not
be the right word. She was at the beginning of an extremely hard labor,
which eventually produced the fabulous Eigel Marcus, but that's another
story. Her house is perched on a steep hillside in Berkeley, and cell
phones don't like it. I had walked upstairs and outside to give wertperch
an update, and it was a gorgeous day - it had been scary hot in
Davis, but Berkeley has perfect summers - seventy, clear, breezy. I leaned
back and closed my eyes, soaking in the sun and the wind fingers caressing
my face and arms. After I was done on the phone, I just sat there, pure
lizard on a rock pleasure. And I realized, my friend, that this was the
first time I had just felt good to be
in my body in as long as I
can remember.
This might sound small or trivial - it is not. Cancer is a breeze -
it's the treatment that kills you. I had staggered along for so long
with side effects, and side effects of the side effects, that it was a real
relevation to just feel…normal. I had gotten used to things like, oh, yes,
you have fibrosis in your shoulder from the radiation, and did you know
that you are going to be more prone to carpal tunnel in your right wrist,
because of lymphedema? No, and I wish someone had told me this
before I began a marathon drafting session that made my hand swell up
like a balloon.
The difference between health and not-health - ease and dis-ease is
fairly subjective. I'm starting to whomp this excuse for a body back into
shape - swimming and tromping around barefoot in the woods helps. But I
also understand the urge to leave it behind that must come to everyone at a
certain point during this sort of treatment. My suspicion is that everyone going through cancer treatment has moments when they long for death. The trick is to talk yourself, or have someone else talk you out of it.
Robertson Davies refers to
the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. At some point it's not only that,
but the foul rag and bone shop that makes up this body, this organic
miasma that still takes breath and weeps and loves, and that at moments I longed to
leave behind. It's burned and scarred and sliced to pieces, yes, I'll
confess, I am a witch, please drown me! Once your physical self is in rags and tatters, how easy it must be to decide to leave it behind.
On the other hand, and this is where I was convolutedly leading to, I've
had this early promotion to crone. Chemotherapy mostly put paid to menses,
and tamoxifen has shorted it out the rest of the way. So I get to be a
crone, at 43. Granted, you know that any woman worth her salt is all
three,
mother, maiden and crone, but there are certain benefits to cronedom
that
mothers don't seem to get to share. Name me a female archetype that
gets to have a
trickster side. Crones are much more likely to have a
Coyote aspect than moms. Young girls can have a trickster element (Pippi
Longstocking, say), but not "matrons" (and isn't THAT an awful word?). I
get to be wise and scary and eccentric and fierce and witchy instead of
only nurturing and charming and mothery. Kevin has always been perfectly
aware of my witchy side, but it seems to be becoming more visible. I don't
remember 10 years ago wanting to be slightly scary - now I understand where
that scary old lady thing comes from. It's fun to be the witch next door, and chase small children off the lawn. Now, go and enjoy the smell of fall.