My belief’s save me. This summer passed has been horrendous. I hate to keep complaining, and I am not now, I swear. I just need to share this with you as I promised I would. In the meantime, in order to show you that I am not, now complaining, I am actually doing quite well, feeling refreshed, quieted and implausibly rested. As I fought with cancer this summer passed, I had to lay down even the hammer and saw at the cabin for lack of energy and strength to carry out even the meagerest of tasks. Even during this horrific time, the cancer treatments weren’t even my largest worry, my greatest source of pain and sickness, nor the largest drain of my energy. My Son’s battle with drugs far out shadowed the cancer and treatments. I will spare you the details as reliving it now is not my intension. But suffice it to say, I had no idea that people got that bad off with drugs, I simply did not know. I had no idea what drugs could do, and I thought I was fairly well informed (as I still believe I am). With drug addiction, there is no end to the Hell and you when you find yourself entangled with an addicted family member, you are robbed of any reasonable sense of sanity and decency and left, writhing in illogical, incomprehensible pain of so alien a character, you’d sooner believe you, your own self had gone mad. It is in this context I wish to begin your understanding of what happened recently. I was at a bitter extreme as to how to handle my Son. No matter what I did, and it seemed I didn’t have any help. As I got sicker from the treatments, my ex-wife began to get more involved (which was hard for her sense she lives several hundred miles away, and our Son simply would not return her calls or texts). When things literally couldn’t possibly get any worse, he finally agreed to go in to treatment. I couldn’t believe what happened next. As our loved one suffered some of the worst pain I have ever seen or even heard of, we could find NO help for him! The local “hospital” wouldn’t take him. Nor would any of the regional hospitals near Somerset. Finally, he agreed to go into the Ridge where he had been earlier, but had left against medical advice (AMA), but even they left him waiting what would have been 24 hours in their waiting room, withdrawing from drugs while the insurance company decided whether or not to allow the payment of the treatment. He finally left the waiting room, as would I have done myself, and he found more dope. I simply didn’t know what to do, I went up into the woods behind my mother’s house, and I prayed to God. He had been answering prayers in my own life every day in an astonishing way, but when it came to prayers for my son, God didn’t seem to be listening. I had been praying for him all summer yet nothing was happening at all. I was dumbfounded when even the Ridge wouldn’t take him in for help. But then the morning after my prayer, my ex-wife called and proclaimed that she had found a treatment facility which would take him in that night, and they would handle every detail! This seemed beyond hopeful and as I remained cautiously optimistic, suddenly things started happening. But I went down for the count. I became so ill, my mother had to come get me and take me home with her for a few days. I could not rise out of the bed for several days, and I had never, in my life, been so sick. When I came out of the haze, even though I had all of the facts as they occurred I realized that my Son was in Florida and he had made it through detox with no problems. Yesterday was his seventh day without drugs and he was on his way to a new treatment for the next 30 or 60 days. When I spoke to him, he was so happy and he sounded so happy and sane! I know he is not out of danger, but at least he is in a good place, and he is out of immediate danger. What I find astonishing is how God answered this prayer. He closed off every other avenue, except the one in Floridian and I am certain he did this for a reason. He disallowed what I considered to be our only option, The Ridge. But if my Son had gone to the Ridge, he probably would not have stuck it out, and would have checked himself out like he did last time, and he would be right back in the town he knows so well. Alternatively, he is happily along his way to rehabilitation in Florida. Even is he checked himself out, he would have nowhere to go, and no way to get home! It is amazing how this worked out. Then, to top it all off, last week, when my Son arrived, somebody took a photo of a cloud in the shape of an angle in the sky’s over Palm Springs, Florida. It is amazing that I even saw this photo, with the millions of photo’s that people put on facebook. Friends, I am not a very good Christian. I was raised in this belief, and I have never renounced it. In fact, I have always believed, but I have not been active in my beliefs. I have not prayed as often as I needed too. But even after many years of me sitting on the sidelines, God has been there for me through this cancer and all other problems. Any doubts I might have had about Christianity, those are now long gone, and I am left with the sweetest faith and belief in a God who loves me and is moving me through my life by my side. We need not face a single thing without God at our side.

Since the day they found the cancerous mass, August 26, 2011, I have prayed for God to heal my body. After days of bedridden sickness due to chemotherapy, I was driving to the lake to meet my mother and step father for a boat ride on Lake Cumberland in the glorious October. Hazy and still a little foggy from the chemo, something profound occurred to me (don’t stop reading). Reeling from the deep depression and anxiety of being as sick as I was, I prayed that daily prayer…. For God to remove all cancer from my body. As a gust of wind blew a bundle of yellow leaves just in front of my vehicle, I wondered briefly, when and how would I know I was healed. When I would know that God had healed me? After more than two years of praying this same prayer, I have come to realize, in order to improve the quality of life, I need to know if God intends to heal me or not. A solution came to me in a push of great relief woven perfectly with a sense of duty and mission. That great question was entirely up to me. My whole life, I have expected to be normal. I have expected I would live to be 75 to 85 years old, and that was fine with me. Just like every cancer patient, I have lived the last two years knowing that my lifespan could be and most likely would be greatly diminished. So you and I have been praying for divine intervention – for God to remove the cancer from my body and restore me to my previous sense of mission. Driving, I thought about how I would know I was healed. Would it come with a clean PET Scan? After having several clean scans, I realize a clean PET scan would not be evidence of God’s healing. If there is no diagnostic instrument that can answer the healing question, I guess I would have to wait till I was 75 to 85 years old in order to see if God healed me. But if He did heal me, but I waited the remainder of my natural, cancer free life to know it, or to witness the “proof” of it, what good would the healing be anyway? I would have lived a complete life believing I was still sick and diminished – forty, fifty years of NOT living, but wondering. It then occurred to me in that emotional push of great relief and a long, firm reach for strength, God would heal me the moment I accepted it. I have already lived longer than the doctors expected. I have no reason to believe this will not continue. In the absence of any medical tool that can proclaim me healed, the only other device would be in taking the journey to the end of my life to know whether healing had occurred. If I continue in the mindset I have been in for the past twenty-six months (wondering if I had been healed or searching for the answer), forty years hence, I would have destroyed any and all healing God had actually done for me, no matter if I lived one more year…. Five more….. ten more…. 50 more years. The entire question and Idea of healing collapsed right in front of me and I realized that true healing of this cancer means living each and every day that I possibly can, for the soul purpose of living that day. And if I had the strength to do this, then I am healed by God through my faith. The need for “proof” would fasten me to a diminished life of illness of any given length. So I suppose I will borrow a device from my friends in addiction recovery. I am healed from this cancer if I can live each day as it comes and as long as I keep looking for healing to come, it never will. Rather, if I accept that I am already healed, only then am I truly healed. And I will go forward stitching together the days of my life just like everybody else; with no idea when it will all end. I suppose it could be argued, the only illness I have is an emotional one wherein, I cease to completely live for fear of dying.

video blog "DRIVING"

Two Year Anniversary

This is the anniversary week for the discovery of the cancer in my body. On august 26, 2011 I had a colonoscopy that found the large mass at the very end of my large colon. I remember being miffed about having to do that and miss an afternoon fishing on my beloved creek. I had no idea that anything was seriously wrong with me, so when they woke me up, (the doctors pretty much knew on sight/site what I was in for) I remember feeling, though I never spoke the words, “oh no”. I kept feeling like I needed to push “stop”, then rewind the tape, and start over… it felt as if that should have been an option. In those first few minutes as a cancer patient, the anxiety that sank down through my body from my mind was unspeakable, and it was a perfect blend of pure horror, a desire to do the tests again – just to make sure there wasn’t a mistake – and that I wanted to erase what I had just learned and rewrite a new script. I was in an all-out, all encompassing, grand mal panic episode, and I had no idea how I would ever escape it. So severe was the anxiety, my hands and feet felt hot, even to the touch, and I felt like running – sprinting as far and as fast as I could. The anxiety was as frightening as anything else, and I just wanted it to stop; but in order to get the panic to stop, I had to remove or eliminate its source. How was I to do that? But to the Glory of God, the panic and debilitating anxiety subsided fairly quickly on its own, just like normal anxiety, the kind that arrives without cause or purpose. A few days later, after surgery and diagnostics, they gave me the news, stage 4 colon cancer, and I didn’t even know what that meant. The shock and horror of those early days escape me, and lay beyond my ability to convey in words. I thought, my life as I knew it, was over. I was standing on the edge of the most vast, wholesome, necessary learning period of my life and I suppose, in a great many way, I am thankful for it. I had no idea where the cancer would take me, or how sick I would get (from the cancer or the treatments). I never imagined how difficult it would be. I mean, I really had no idea. The worst part of it all came in the first few months. Doctor after doctor after doctor told me that there was no cure, and that I had probably 2 or 3 years to live. A brand new procedure, HIPEC vastly improved that prognosis, but it tore my body down severely and permanently. Not only that, but the cancer returned (in my lungs) just nine months after the completion of HIPEC, far quicker than the average in the data. The second year has been somewhat more settled. In this year came general acceptance. I never felt like I only had 2 or 3 years to live. I always thought I’d far outlive that idea, HIPEC or not. I have been able to let go of the things I once loved to do so much, and I have found new, less physically demanding things to do. At this point, it appears as though chemotherapy is going to be a regular part of my life from now on. As times goes on, those treatments make me sicker than they did earlier, and I am worried that the time will come, I will not be able to sustain those treatments. I have about as many good days as I do bad ones, and I’ve been able to maintain some level of physical fitness (not through cycling – I can no longer sit on that narrow seat due to scars and surgical injuries) through working on my new cabin. I don’t have the stamina that I once had – not even close, but with some wise application of the strength I do have, I can accomplish a great deal I have learned. Most importantly, the worst symptom of cancer by far, the fear and anxiety have waned to almost non-existent levels compared to the first year, which isn’t to say I am no longer afraid. Some days I am consumed with fear and dread. But it is not constant, as one would think. I have bright and happy times, which I never would have thought. I suppose the most profound change I have seen in myself, is a general inability to spend any appreciable time with friends or acquaintances. Because of the dramatic treatments aimed at my colon, I am no longer able to function in any reasonable fashion. Many accidents occur, and that is pretty horrible. So I don’t tend to visit or have many visitors. Another reason for the solitude is the fact that even though I have good days, I do have bouts of sickness every day. I never know when these will hit, and the worst thing about these attacks is when I am with others, and I have to cut short the visit, or if I crash and actually need assistance from those I am with. The sickness and the bathroom problems cause needs that just make it vastly easier to stay at home, or near home or alone. You’d think that most people would understand this, but some have and do get their feelings hurt when I don’t accept an invitation to do things. I have made it two years, as I always knew I would. As for the future, I simply have no idea. Some days it feels like the end is near, and that I won’t make it another year. Other times, I feel like I will make it a great distance into the future, even to a normal longevity (70 or more years in age). When I am in a mood where I believe in the longer time scales, I function daily much better. I could not function at all without a strong belief in God. The number and ways that many of my prayers have been answered would buoy even the strictest atheist into believing. Praise be to God. Always.

August 6, 2003 Wayfaring Stranger. I believe at times, I'm a perpetual wayfaring stranger. a stranger even in my homelands. It's odd, when I look at my family history, legends - At least the family I most identify with, the Indians over the Upper Cumberland watershed. there are times, the deepest since of belonging I've ever known, is upon a gaze of the Big South Fork River - At times I've gained such a powerful since of belonging, in an instant, upon a visit, deep, not focused by myself, tears form in my eyes. And for me, beings like me, the deepest, happiest, strangest tear one can shed, is the one of happiness - happiness in belonging - belonging either to a child, belonging to a lover, or, as in the case of which I now speak, belonging to a land, or a river. There are times when I look down on this River, I am compelled to the greatest since of ease. And it's not something I look for, deep inside. It is not something I assist, or bring upon myself - it is a natural swelling of the land, up to consume me - and I am powerless. And as is the case a great much of the time, such a powerful belonging to one place, one land, one river, often leaves a person feeling like a wayfaring stranger when not in those places. These eight and a half months - this year, 2003 has been a strange time for me. It has been a time of great self discovery. It has been a time of change. I don't pretend that the times or this phase is over - on the contrary, uncertainty is the only thing that I am certain of these days. I know that I have not kept up with this journal as I have in the past. It is something that wasn't a part of what needed to be done. but I have often thought about it, even had anxiety over it. wondering if I'd ever get back to it. Now that I sit here, and I write for you, I still do not know if it is something that I will maintain regularly - I am still writing the novel that I dream of. Regardless of what remains to be done, or what I will do, I am here, back at Richards Bend for a while at least - and, for the moment, I am compelled to write for you. I am rusty - the gears and processes between my ears are rusty - what I create here, I am not as happy with as I once was. And I think this is for many reasons. The most obvious reason is because I've not done it regularly in so long. Another reason is that maybe I've lost the belief that it is a worthy use of my time. Maybe I no longer believe my words or worth the time spent reading them. Or maybe, as I am led to believe at times, my life here in these woods, in this isolated cabin is more of a liability than an asset, at least in terms of how I am viewed by others. There have been folks think and say some pretty harsh things about my personality when they learn of where I live. What's interesting, there are those too, who say just the opposite - that a life like this one here, would be a marvelous thing. And it seems, nobody is indifferent. I guess I have come to ask myself the ask question that a great many other people are asking for me. and that is, why? Why am I here? I spent a year building the place, the project itself, decent and worthy in anybody's opinion. and then it came time to move in; the spooky nights, the remoteness, some loneliness, the cold, snowy nights and getting iced in for days at a time - no one else here but me - and with the loss of the ability to write, I really did begin to question why I am doing this. Writing a journal, an online journal from such a wholesome, isolated setting was something I wanted to do and it seemed to me, in "The Habitation", I failed. It felt as if it were to much. It felt as if the life were too perfect or something. It felt as if, no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to communicate in this format, what it was like to live here. It is also hard to update my pages from the cabin. And so I slowly began to withdraw. And so I'm back now - I've made peace with this journal. I've made peace with a great many things this year. a great many other things, I'm still fighting. But I've come to believe, I don't have to keep this journal in order to believe in living here. At one time, it felt as if living here and keeping the journal were synonymous - that I couldn't do either one without the other. Now, at least I believe, I am at peace with it. I do love being here. I love the isolation, but I do go in to town for visits with friends. I love the remoteness; the solitude. I love being independent - keeping the place warm with wood. I love the wilderness, and for what it's worth, I love keeping this journal.

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Just Another Day

Sitting here, as usual, well before daylight. I don’t know if it is from lack of sleep or something else, but I do not feel as strong as I have at other times. Practices long ago forsaken, lessons long ago learned, each time I feel good, each time I feel energetic or I feel that things are good, there’s nothing to worry about, I remind myself then, low times are again out there. Though I feel good now, I will not feel this way for ever. In fact, I probably won’t feel this way for very long. And this is not a bad outlook, or a poor attitude. Good times don’t last, Thank God, because then again neither do bad times, and if anything is constant it is that everything changes. (I’m trying to purge and eliminate redundancy from my writings) Are there times, as it seems, that I “see” further and better the true nature of things? I think probably. Even our ability to form accurate constructs of reality change from day to day, and if some days I can’t actually see into things more deeply, The Universe sure fooled me. In math we see this in linear algebra; that if we have at least one piece of information about every unknown, then we can ultimately solve the problem (morebetter, that the problem has a solution). In daily life, there are millions of variables and libraries of information to go along with that. I am not the county’s best mathematician nor the best problem solver, but no analysis can easily solve numerical problems involving greater than three equations and three unknowns; MY POINT BEING, it is not surprising that life is a mystery, and often we are doing very well with even our very best guesses (saving ourselves from the horrors of actual solutions which may not even exist). As time has passes, on those many and increasing days I am able to say “oh death, where is thy sting….”, I know it more and more better, life comes with its own “help” file, we go along “clicking” the question mark tab several times a day without even knowing it. Though a person cannot lose anything more than his or her life, and even there, the anxiety softens with time, ableing us to carry on in the face of great uncertainty. Cancer comes, we deal with it, accept it, and ultimately find ourselves more concerned about how well our cellular telephone is functioning than our lives themselves, and Thank God for that. Which isn’t to say, having long since dealt with it all, it doesn’t all come crashing back down to Earth again, making enormous noise at times (everything changes) scaring the hell out of us all over again. Even still, we are not even surprised when things are back to normal by that afternoon, and we are back to our merry selves. It’s like, I don’t know; it’s like feeling greatful for that horrible headache. It was almost worth having the headache to experience it going away. This particular crash (remember, I’m not feeling well again) I think came when I heard somebody mention how easy it was to learn the python computer programing language. I had a class in programing in college, and went on to use it at my job as a geologist many times. I enjoyed writing code and I was sad when it became less and less necessary for the general public to be able to compile little programs for themselves; little strings of computer logic to help us solve our own daily problems; to answer our own complex questions. Though I didn’t know it at the time, busy as I was, being a professional geologist/geophysicist, generating computer program code is soothing in the same way sewing is soothing. I became sad, because my mind’s voice said, well then, I must obtain and learn this “python”. The happier I became about learning python, the sadder I became knowing that I necessarily should limit myself on what I want to accomplish with my newly trimmed life expectancy. Good friends will tell me that I shouldn’t limit myself at all but it is me who hast to answer the question more expediently than most, do I want to finish a lot of things, or do I want to finish a few things but well (do I use a question mark here? I truly do not know). I “Mona Lisa” smile at myself when I remember Jonathan W. Thompson, versions 30.0 through 39.9. Having good days then meant that I had actually arrived at a new, happier state of being, the elusive wellness I felt was hard won war bounty which would endure and not fade. I have long since abandoned such stable and unchanging views of the world, trading them in for the reality that everything changes and I like it better this a way. I will gladly watch good moods pale for the knowledge that even my deepest “hell” is not permanent either, that I’d nearly endure that headache in order to know what it feels like when it goes away.

Involuntary Motion (2005)

Deliberately - never a good time for me - that it has all come down to this - over and over every new moment, life experience itself a life dividing splitting multiplying everything new containing mostly old the inexperienced asymptotically approaching the whole thing Wherewhen every new day becoming less significant - a smaller thing Ifwhen my second day of life was half my experience that same day - from this current perspective - was it the same as 20 years? Here. That i find myself here at this moment - And that - no less a curiosity than a rack of billiard balls rolling themselves backwards to form a perfect rack - impacting so perfectly together to absorb their collective energies and dispose of it on a briskly escaping cue. II I made a mistake . (once) and i feel better now - having disposed of the guilt - keeping it a secret. I'll not be wrong again - blaming it all on myself - paying back what i don't owe - JonBoy laughs at his dad - asks why the heck he doesn't have any glassware - spoons and forks of the metallic variety . so dad says he doesn't like owning things cause usually the ownership thingy operates in reverse - operates in reverse . My house is filled with enough things to worry about as it is - Dadburn kid can eat out of paper served with a smile and the most genuine fatherly concern in all of humanity. The glassware bowls i broke drilled threaded hung - now banging out cute little tickettitytanks out in the wind out on the porch - confirming for me a belief that had been festering in my heart for which i had had no proof - that most everything had a purpose . I mean a purpose in spite of my own . doesn't add up to nothing anyhow (that kind of stuff c)- good as dads gotten cook'n cornflakes - that boy knows what's up- i mean it never was about the housewares . so you got to give that boy some credit . strange as the old man has been - it's like hot coffee at bob evans - just like it ought to be - so he either doesn't know or genuinely doesn't care - either way - it's just one of the million things that make me love him so much . and i own that c - and i guess that was my point . I like owning that . but i have owned far too much in my life i have owned for too little because fairy tales aren't fairy tales until after happily ever after - which having come to grips with that c - the thought of being any richer than i am at this moment - is utterly meaningless . its all mine. III . it can be quite shocking - learning to what extent the universe does not revolve around us - it's not that i am a mean-spirited person - contrary but to say there are a lot of stupid people in the world is probably a mean - unnecessary thing to say . Mean - doesn't make it false . (and there are those who are now wondering or thinking that i meant them . And i probably wasn't until they thought so) IV . Ansel said when ever he took a photo - he felt as if he was taking a picture of something was that really there - - - taking a photo of how he felt about the scene - the emotion she went on for a spell - this and that about her art - this person whose art i hold in the highest possible regard - uneducated i am about art - painting - drawing ; that the measure of good art to me is directly proportional to the extent at which i leave the work scratching the crown of my skull - wondering how the hell they did that . that is my only measure Human beings amaze me in every possible way - the greatest amazement i find - always in the creative realm - her 30 minute dialogue about abstraction versus realism - who likes whose art or not - i was most curious as to why she even cared . To me - when a person reaches a certain level of skill - who the hell cares what the critics think - but then - easy for me to say . A rope always frays most at its end and ever as much along it's length - same in life i suppose - today is when it all unravels - yesterday’s unraveling’s fold back nicely in the current of time - and are woven back into the fabric of our lives as we remember - I have never personally known a more impressive artist - and she's over there riding in my car - anxious . A lesson for me - we can't always hold the body of our work - or the unfrayed length of it - in our mind . We all - even the best - can at times - focus only upon the messy end - on the current as for me - walking in the fog of snow - i thought about the phases of my own creativity - my outlets many . Athletically - academically - finally expressively - in words and photographs. I don't always have enuf energy to express myself - us bipolars are like that - burst -withdrawal - burst But i am most impressed with what ansel said - that what he photographs isn't really there - that he was never photographing nature itself but HOW HE FELT about what he was seeing - the photo somehow contained that emotion . That is what she's not thinking of when she wonders if her own art is abstract enuf - it is the same dear - her paintings - while always beautiful landscapes - overflowing with emotion - and that is what art is - expression of feeling - i think i read that somewhere - sure as hell didn't learn it in the modern physics course i took in college As for me - walking in the fog of snow - i thought about the phases of my own creativity - my outlets many . I do suppose - within the current fray of my life - it is not that i have ceased to find beauty in my life - rather that i have grown tired of trying to convey it .That taken as a whole - my life is not as beautiful as i had hoped it would be - and those moments when my breath is taken away - significant to me - and of the utmost meaning - i am most often met with frustration in my futile attempts to express it . and for now - i've grown tired of the pursuit - especially since i have seen that it can spoil its most holistic meaning - it is where i find myself - living in the thing that i see rather than trying to express it - i often feel forced to choose V . Ansel said when ever he took a photo - he felt as if he was taking a picture of something was that really there - - - taking a photo of how he felt about the scene - the emotion she went on for a spell - this and that about her art - this person whose art i hold in the highest possible regard - uneducated i am about art - painting - drawing ; that the measure of good art to me is directly proportional to the extent at which i leave the work scratching the crown of my skull - wondering how the hell they did that . that is my only measure Human beings amaze me in every possible way - the greatest amazement i find - always in the creative realm - her 30 minute dialogue about abstraction versus realism - who likes whose art or not - i was most curious as to why she even cared . To me - when a person reaches a certain level of skill - who the hell cares what the critics think - but then - easy for me to say . A rope always frays most at its end and ever as much along it's length - same in life i suppose - today is when it all unravels - yesterdays unraveling’s fold back nicely in the current of time - and are woven back into the fabric of our lives as we remember - I have never personally known a more impressive artist - and she's over there riding in my car - anxious . A lesson for me - we can't always hold the body of our work - or the unfrayed length of it - in our mind . We all - even the best - can at times - focus only upon the messy end - on the current as for me - walking in the fog of snow - i thought about the phases of my own creativity - my outlets many . Athletically - academically - finally expressively - in words and photographs . I don't always have enuf energy to express myself - us bipolars are like that - burst -withdrawal - burst But i am most impressed with what ansel said - that what he photographs isn't really there - that he was never photographing nature itself but HOW HE FELT about what he was seeing - the photo somehow contained that emotion . That is what she's not thinking of when she wonders if her own art is abstract enuf - it is the same dear - her paintings - while always beautiful landscapes - overflowing with emotion - and that is what art is - expression of feeling - i think i read that somewhere - sure as hell didn't learn it in the modern physics course i took in college As for me - walking in the fog of snow - i thought about the phases of my own creativity - my outlets many . I do suppose - within the current fray of my life - it is not that i have ceased to find beauty in my life - rather that i have grown tired of trying to convey it .That taken as a whole - my life is not as beautiful as i had hoped it would be - and those moments when my breath is taken away - significant to me - and of the utmost meaning - i am most often met with frustration in my futile attempts to express it . and for now - i've grown tired of the pursuit - especially since i have seen that it can spoil its most holistic meaning - it is where i find myself - living in the thing that i see rather than trying to express it - i often feel forced to choose VI . ten months - still unaccustomed to the sounds of this place - the smells the embeddedness - embedded within an either that is itself unembeddable - in motion. in my particular case - involuntary robins sing Natures melody - depressive for some - elixir for others unnoticed by the "dead" - Insomuch that another spring is upon me - (the Hepatica might well have bloomed by now) - is it indifference? Or is it truly that the circumstances of my life have changed? until this moment - i hadn't thought to ask myself that question - insodoing - failing to notice the ground upon which i walk - that there even is something holding me up - how could something so fundimental be something never pondered? that i might find a striking scene out my bathroom window - do my eyes let me down? trick me into seeing beauty where there is none - keeping me firmly imbedded within what i find unfamiliar? VII . deep within the fabric of my experience - there are eddies of feeling - gently swirling - swelling at times - flowing out into the boundaries of my physical being filling me with a calm no human expression might hope to convey - at times even this is alarming i can not now - nor have i ever been able to describe my deepest feelings - experiences so rich as to be difficult to tolerate in all but menial portions - yet it is where i live. that i have had disappointments - well - every human being alive has - but i have had much upon which to be glad - and my experience is not one from which you would expect a reasonable person to recoil - - and it is not that i wish to flee from the whole - entire - i do wish at times - for complete- absolute stillness escaping not the ill - not the bad - but the good and delightful as well - everything. i do find it odd - forty three years of life - without recess. there are times i feel overwhelmed - there are times i simply want to rest. X . two things i miss most - my Son Jon Boy - but that has gone without saying for some time now - he's grown so much in the last two years - taller than me now - playing in a rock band - admitted to the most prestigious high school in Indy - proud father i am. The other thing is a genuine fireside - a wintersnight fireside - wherewithout - a soul could freeze in place - - upon closer examination - i find the two - my Son and the fireside bring forth exactly the same feeling inside - a sensation of a soothing glow - all-filling - the feeling that if i never had another thing beside these - a fine fireside - and my Son - it wouldn’t be a wasted life XI . drive some time - fifty miles or more - having left the house at dawn - expect to be floating down the river - trout river by 8 big water river - water that can hurt you if you're not careful and watching for the lurking house-sized rocks that can jump up from the trout-filled abyss and sink your canoe - cold winter day - by my self - no time for an emergency - river moving - put in - float drift down on the discharge - point of no return came and went about thirty seconds after i launched - once a half minute into the trip - the entire trip must be completed - due to the extreme current flow of the river - The day cold - north wind - fish not biting well - but no matter - as Gray also put if - "The fishing was find - the caching was so good though" - and i like that - with a deep sky - bright with weak weepy clouds the day long - many hawks making high broad circle - mating season - many daffodils have bloomed - the water clear - deep and very cold - full of fine - in fact monster trout - if i could only get them to take my bait - I've been fishing all my life - grandfather took me it seems all the time - i wonder sometimes what he would think of my fishing abilities now - fifteen years gone - it was a slow day - catching wise - but i did catch two trophy fish - one brown trout and the other a rainbow - either fish would have made it worth the day it took to complete the expedition - I do so love to trout fish - and as the years go by - i get better and better - and that is a joy to me - XII the old idea - there are times my immediate experience that lay beyond what i might hope to convey - in every possible aspect. It is only because i know you find this to be true as well - my silent periods not unnoticed- forgiven. XIII full thunder moon - they are out there, by the lake and field filled with wildflowers. Drinking a beer or two, not twist off - a rough day, packing - driving past the Massive, high hanging land - pitching tents not worth pitching - lighting lamps and putting the young ones to sleep. Friends. Driving 4 hours over the most magnificent landscape in the world, to find a place to camp? Going places i never thought possible - Never thought would come to fruition. Might never see again. …. The past is more certain than the future, if only slightly.

May

I’VE BEEN walking around listening to the sounds of and smelling the smells of May. I am reminded that it is by far my favorite month. It always has been, especially the last two weeks. But deep within the bird song, the sounds of the early summer, there is something I haven’t been able explain. Even though everything is exactly as I would expect it to be – In the context of all of the Mays that have come before, and become my favorite few days of the year, there has been something very slightly odd. I realized what it was yesterday, while out watering my garden. I didn’t get to experience May last year. I was busy getting ready for my surgeries in Pittsburgh. I was gathering medical records, actually traveling to Pittsburgh to consult doctor Bartlett, and I just simply did not lift my gaze from my work to notice. Two things I would say about this: I didn’t realize I was doing it until May came around again this year, and last May was the only May I’ve failed to notice. Oh my gosh friends, it is with a welling up of tears I remember all of the finest times in my life; Always in May. Grand backpacking trips, climbing high mountains, canoeing beautiful rivers, exploring deep caves, competing for regional championships on bicycles, looking at wild flowers, sitting still in rainy, darkening woods listening to whip-0r-wills. And for many years May was the time I was preparing for my Son, my Jonny Boy to come for the summer. I don’t have a single ill memory of May. Is it surprising that I didn’t notice as May last year passed without my notice? I think not. Oddly, I was diagnosed with the first reoccurrence of the cancer early last May, yet my heart does not make an association. Those first few days afterwards, I was certain I was doomed. I was certain I would not live much longer, but when I met with Pittsburgh, everything seemed like it would be fine. The treatment itself nearly killed me, and I wasn’t back on my feet again until about September. But as I regained my strength, I also began to set aside the belief I had that my life would be cut short. I began to think that the doctors had it wrong, and I would survive. Very few, yet some do survive my illness. Why then couldn’t it be me? It could. So it is, I find myself this May, still fighting yet a second reoccurrence; yet my survival beliefs so strong, I never even questioned whether the treatments would be successful. During this chemo session (starting at the beginning of March) I have not had to endure the sickness and pain of chemo with the addition of an impending since of doom – my belief in healing so strong, so rooted in my faith in Christ and Our Father in Heaven, I have been left in peace to suffer the sickness without the question of survivability. I think I decided that it simply didn’t matter if I survived or not, I am free to believe anything I want, or at least anything my brain can convince my heart is true, true or not. I go into my final chemo treatment in less than a week. I face this final treatment, still very sick and in a great deal of pain from the previous treatment. All of this time, I have fought hard to get on my feet, stay on my feet, get up, go out, keep doing things, don’t give in, don’t give up… thinking, the only way I am actually sick is if I believe that I am sick. Perhaps this, so I could see May this year in all of its glory. This morning, today, and yesterday too, I feel less resolve. Each morning, hours before the sunrise, the birds begin to sing – seemingly eager to start a new day. And so I stir, also eager to experience whatever the day has in store for me. Yet as the treatments pile up, my body becomes weaker (from fighting the cancer, probably not the cancer itself), getting to my feet in the delightfully dark predawn, I am beset with great pain. It seems every bone in my body rebels when I get up, and place my living load upon my skeleton. The pain in my bones has always subsided quickly, and by the time coffee is made, I can move much better. Not so lately. I don’t suppose I ever thought I would get this sick; this incapacitated. Of course, my surgeries last summer, put me down much more than I am now. But that was expected. That was from having been cut open from my breast bone to my pelvic bone, and much of my insides cut away. Nothing like that has occurred to make me this weak. Chemo does not come with a knife, making the sickness more stealthy I suppose. This May, I find I am alive and sick. I also alive and well. Each day, I rise to find my limits, over and over. Am I a fool? To leave the house every day seeking joy and wellbeing, almost without fail to return sick and defeated? Not a fool. I always try. I have kept trying. Having missed last May, and sensing something different still in this May, I also find, that May before last, I had no idea I was sick. I had no idea there was cancer in my body. I wasn’t feeling sick, so I passed through that May as I had the forty seven mays prior – with complete normalcy – extraordinary beauty, loveliest of times, the Beautiful Earth adorning – and just that recently, I had no reason to believe I had anything other than a normal chance at longevity. I still am confident I will survive far longer than the doctors believe I will. I have learned, I cannot take the events of any given day to predict my future. I am so sick some days. I go out sometimes, thinking I will fare the movement well, then as suddenly as anything I’ve ever known, I feel the strength drain out of my body in a sensation like it is draining out through my feet; pouring out of my arms, and chest and legs and head, like water poured out on the ground. I make my way back home, sometimes dejected, sometimes not. I settle into my home, my bed and hope and pray tomorrow will be better. Alarmingly, today, I am not sure how much longer I can resist this illness. Six hundred and forty three days a good fight makes. Only normal after that much time, I’d look for new footing.

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