An evil condition.

Found out yesterday my mother’s boyfriend of ten years – the love of her life – has stage four lung cancer already spread to the bones. My aunt says this brings up all the other deaths for her and I think she’s right: this will be cancer number five in our family. So sick of cancer and it’s seeming lack of rhyme or reason. All the supposed cancer prevention bullshit. Paul never smoked and ate red meat his entire life: he’s got a perfectly healthy heart and the doctor’s say he’s in the 15% of lung cancer patients who get it with no connection to smoking. Lyman ran 5 miles a day up to age 84 and he winds up with bone cancer. My Grandma ran with him and died of pancreatic cancer at age 54. What is cancer? What does cancer even mean, I have often wondered. Let’s look it up:

1. Pathology
a. a malignant and invasive growth or tumor, esp. one originating in epithelium, tending to recur after excision and to metastasize to other sites.
b. any disease characterized by such growths.
2. any evil condition or thing that spreads destructively; blight.
3. (initial capital letter) Astronomy. the Crab, a zodiacal constellation between Gemini and Leo.
4. (initial capital letter) Astrology.
a. the fourth sign of the zodiac: the cardinal water sign.
b. a person born under this sign, usually between June 21 and July 22.
5. (initial capital letter) tropic of. See under tropic (def. 1a).
[Origin: 1350–1400; ME < L: lit., crab; L s. cancr-, dissimilated from *carcr-, with *carc-r- akin to Gk karkínos, Skt karkata crab; see canker]

And that’s what you do. You look it up, all the doctor speak, the treatments. I’ve watched two people fight it and go into remission and back and two people refuse treatment and two go home to die. I don’t know which is better or worse or if there is such a thing as better or worse.

So I’m going with definition (1)b.

Probably the only thing that will make sense today

"Dog is God spelled backwards. That means something, I'm just not sure what exactly. But human is namuh spelled backwards." - Marc-Christophe

Didion on the brain

I find myself thinking about Joan Didion a lot this week; a typical "what would Didion do" time. I tend to look to images of her, like a good pair of Frye harness boots, as some model of strength when things get a bit cloudy.
This one's from 1970 and you get a sense of how she could've worn the t-shirt she slept in to the country club and dared anyone to turn their nose up at her:

but whenever I think of Didion I think of those giant sunglasses...

almost a shield from the world.
What would Didion do? I so often wonder. She fought through it, she wrote. She put on those giant sunglasses and went to interview prisoners. Turned failing relationships and depression into essays on place and time. Played it as it laid, so to speak.
Someone quoted "Slouching towards Bethlehem" this week - I can't remember who, Fred Thompson or a character on the Stand mini-series - and now I seem to hear it everywhere:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
We seem to be in one of "those" times. Who writes for these times, I wonder? Where is our Didion? What would Didion do?

Very Impromptu

It's been so long since I blogged I couldn't even remember the sign in. Oh well. Here goes.
Word I can never figure how to spell: plural of go, gos or goes?
This is what I have figured out about blogging:
I rarely blog when in relationships.
My blogging is mostly a love song to you, and you and you.
Perhaps I have lost my love song.
Everyone has a blog. I suspect the ones without would have the best.
I no longer know if I am cynical, idealist or a cynical idealist.
Coming soon: blonde goes "is that black or brown?"
When good people go blog.