A look back at Autumn

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November 15, 2016

Since my last post much has happened. My PSA has done a roller-coaster set of readings. Down to about 30 and most recently (Nov 1) up to 37.  Part of the decline to 30 from earlier 45 was that I got chemo and a Lupron shot at the same time. Lupron helped some, which means that some of the cancer in me is still susceptible to hormone therapy but obviously quite a bit is not.

The round of chemo has kept my PSA down so I have continued past the originally scheduled 6 sessions. I now have had 8 and will have the ninth on November 28. It is not clear that there will be a 10th but I expect that there will be.

This round has been hard on my stomach and lower GI. I have had stomach discomfort, diarrhea, and some constipation. These side effects are draining. They take the oomph out of me.  Usually they occur about days 7-12 of the cycle. I work hard to maintain some exercise, trying to get in 2 miles walking a number of times a week. I am skipping it today in order to write this.

I found myself buoyed up when the PSA dropped from 45 to 30. I know not to count on that drop as an indication that further drops are coming, but it was a relief. I had spent much of the autumn working on end of life things and that task is also draining. But we have most of that set now, my end of life celebration, our money, the house, clarity with the kids and immediate family, cars, house repairs, yard changes both completed and ordered from the landscaper in case I am not here in the spring. I have felt less down these past few weeks and that is a fun feeling, sort of like the feeling I used to have about how good it felt not to have a migraine.

During these weeks I get rock climbing when I can, no longer once a week but still every other week.  And as I have said in these pages many times, I can’t let this condition turn me to, well, a pity party. We have a grand Thanksgiving weekend coming up, visits from old friends, from family and a meal on Thursday at one of Minneapolis’ finest restaurants, Mannys, in has now become a tradition. I keep up with my German, though right now it feels like I am at one of those plateaus that I would like to rise up from, but that is not happening quickly. Our Christmas plan is to spend December 23-30 with all the family in a villa in South Padre Island. What a kick that will be. We have never done that before at Christmas. I am really looking forward to that. 

The work with spirituality has also plateaued. I have read some fine books and have a new perception of religion in general though I am still working on the meaning not just of spirituality but of living spiritually. One of the touchstones of such living is connection, which I am finding hard to define and realize. It is easy to define connection but what does it mean to be connected to others and other things? The answers of course can be worked out rationally and easily but the emotional (or realized) meaning of those answers is much harder for me to achieve. I have enjoyed meditation which I began about 2 months ago. In the short term it is pretty amazing in its ability to effect calmness. I like that. But I am not sure of the long term goal of meditation. Is it supposed to lead to the traditional mystical experience? To the dissolution of the ego? Are there plateaus in the practice? I am certainly a beginner and I have no answers to these questions.

Oh, the photography. What a joy. I have completed my 366 project. I certainly received many supportive comments and I have posted all 381 photos in an album on Facebook. I have also written an essay about what I learned from the project and probably will post it on this site in the near future. I loved the awareness and sense of harmony with the seasons that the project caused. Preparations continue for the show I will have with a local painter who is rendering a number of my photos. I think that show will open in the mid winter. My photo group is a great source of satisfaction. I love the discussions of each other’s photos. I am amazed and delighted with what we see in each other’s work. Our work is available on Flickr as Red Cedar Photographers if you would like to look.

Photography is a kind of meditative practice. The practitioner must be aware of and focused on the image, which is akin to breath. I have a ways to go with this thread of thought, but I enjoy it and will get there.

Enough for now. Thank you for reading.

     

Dealing the Void and Finding Joy

I just found this piece that I wrote some time ago.  I find it accurate to what I experience, though I am now working my way into an understanding of spirituality, as I have explained in previous posts.

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The void and joy

June 14, 2015

I know the void. It is behind everything. I became aware of it when I learned I had a serious cancer that will probably kill me. Here is how the void works: It makes everything pointless. Suddenly questions like Why should I do that? or Why do I care? or Why should I make that plan? or buy that? or work on that project? all take on a different meaning. In my pre-cancer life those things were impinged upon by other cares and needs. The question was answered by considering the impact of a ‘void’ question--whatever it is--against that other thing that I had to get done or wanted to get done in my life. Suddenly with this new reality the projects can seem like whistling in the graveyard. What difference does anything make? If I have a project, say my genealogy, am I just killing time until I die? Is that life? Basically, Who cares?  The void exerts enormous pressure. It impinges on everything. It is present in all decisions, all moments. It is a huge blanket, fog, dullness. The response to it is to sleep. On bad days the void makes itself present, very present. Or perhaps it is that on those days, whatever protection I have against it is thinner. weaker, less able to stand up for itself

It seems to me that for many people the answer to the void is God.  God is as large as the void. God offers the hope of life after. God allows you to avoid the void because you have something as big on your side.

But I am not really able to subscribe to that possibility. Where can I turn?  My answer for now is Joy. I enjoy a lot of things. Photography, rock climbing, eating, and on and on with a list of all the things I am involved with in a day.  The void would have me think ‘How foolish. Who cares? This is not significant.’  The presence of cancer has taught me that I can't accept that. I have to find a grasp on joy. I have to see joy as not some momentary incident (my team wins a baseball game, I see a grand child, I stop at a particularly fine building, I solve a genealogy research issue, I climb a difficult route). Joy or it, close relative engagement has to be permanent.

Where does Joy come from? Right now my only answers are my history and my present. For instance I have a history of rock climbing. When I get better at it the presence of my history of not being good at it feeds my joy. The same for the meal I eat that Mary cooked. But what about time wasters, like digital solitaire? If the void could dictate I would play meaningless solitaire until I die.  With joy solitaire is a connection between events.

There is also joy in the present. That joy has to come from acceptance. Since I have begun these thoughts, I have realized I have a different view of people I meet. I often found it easy to dismiss people--for all kinds of reasons. I won’t detail them. But even total strangers.  It is easy to poke fun.  Now I find that poking fun is ridiculous. Each of them dwells with the

Void. They have to find a way to deal with it.  Dealing with it requires attention to both the present and history. We have to find strength to maintain that attention, that engagement.

I wish I could tell you where that strength is.  I can only say that you have to find it. I found mine when the doctor told me I had cancer, bad cancer, and I realized that I was not afraid. That is my basis. From that I can look at meaninglessness and go forward. It is actually a bit odd, because I have been frightened by other things in my life, like the time I thought I would lose my sight or the various times when I worried that I could lose my job.

I am reminded as I write that when I taught literature, in particular lyric poetry, I told students that for any poem they could diss it or explore it. To diss is the voice of the Void.  It is easy to not realize that if you don't have the sense not just that you will die but that you will die in the foreseeable future.  Without that sense of death the Void is just another abstraction. It is only when it becomes the kind of reality that it has for me that I have found that I have to consider it and find a way to keep it from controlling me, or at least derailing me.  I suppose I am controlled by it.  The Hmong talk about the sickness having you rather than you having a sickness and that seems true to me now, though it did not when I first heard the concept.  In that way, yes, cancer has me. But I am not rendered helpless by that fact.  My friend Joe said when he turned one of the milestone birthdays, perhaps 75, ‘What am I supposed to do? Wait around to die?’ And the answer is no. However, the path forward from the point at which that question enters your life is not a flat paved trail or sidewalk.  It is a rocky mountain trail.  It is hard to negotiate, but if I look up it is also the place where I can see, now, beautiful sights, mountain ranges, glacial lakes.  It is the joy that happens when you explore a poem or a painting and suddenly it pays back with insight.