Kindness and quiet acceptance left the polite room. Ridicule, name calling, vile memes, and accusations based on anything but rational thinking has found and magnified its voice as it prefers to shriek and howl into a reverberating hallow chamber.
I’m coming closer to grasping that Zen concept of the temporary. It’s liberating both my mind and heart. Nearly 50 years later, I’m actually understanding the words of the late philosopher, Alan Watts. This is a good thing. And it is not such a good thing.
The book lived in a King Edward cigar box stuffed with a tiny prayer book for Catholic sailors during World War II, and a black beaded rosary. Wrapped in tissue, a broken statue of Mary in her blue and white robes remains where cigars were once offered. A smattering of black and white photos with tropical backgrounds and sailors in white shirts and dark pants have notes written in pencil on the yellowing backs, “This is the line to the latrine!!” and “Here we are waiting for tonight’s special meal — Spam. Oh Brother!”
Admittedly, I’ve been lost as to where I’m going to go next and what is ahead and how do I deal with the many changes in my life. As I’ve written before, I’ll be in cancer treatment for the rest of my life, and most likely at the Phoenix Mayo Clinic. So it made sense to move there. Yet, a level uncertainty brewed inside of me.
Yesterday, with a friend, I walked along the beautiful the Central Coast bluffs. A magnificent display of wildflowers spreading color up against the cerulean blue sea was breathtaking. My friend shared her story about a recent whale watch trip. “It was great. We saw seven gray whales. But there was a baby whale that was alone and swimming south instead of north. That bothered us.”
Photographers like this hillside. It’s juxtaposition. It’s unique. It’s a challenge to photograph because one must be mindful of traffic, mud, holes and lord knows what else to get that perfect photo.
For me this moment paralleled how I feel these days: Like a poppy seeking the sun and holding my delicate bloom together against a hard and rocky environment.
It’s as if we’ve been gifted with a reminder that what we have on this planet is delicate and beautiful. That’s how […]
When I found the beautiful lady, still seductive and beautiful recumbent in her bed, a cantata of sweet moments that we shared in our youth played like a most harmonious acoustic song from long ago.
Her distinct perfume of a masterly crafted sweet wood and oil filled the space between us. My fingers itched to touch her and relive our sensuous operas of emotional expression — operas of great pleasure and pain.
This was a call to war. And the war ignited into full regalia when my guardian angels pulled the plug on my body on Halloween 2018 while I was in a second-opinion consult with a Mayo Clinic gynecologic oncologist. As pale as white paper, and barely able to breath, and worse — unable to control myself, I hurled and splattered volumes of gastrointestinal debris all over her office. Rushed to the ER, the final report read: severe anemia, hemorrhage gostrointestinal upper, malignant neoplasm of endocervix (HCC), and dyspnea — NOS (labored breathing).
I am much like you.
I’m a gadabout
dressed in threadbare wings
still fluttering from
flower to flower…
