Dispensing Dispositions...

Her new mood machine vends the latest vagaries. These outlooks have been organically crafted...replacements for the spent chemo caprices. (As you can appreciate, this appliance does not accept cytotoxic coinage. And, I'm glad...because we ran out.) Today, I pushed all her buttons at once, and she laughed.

Rites de Passage...

The daily drift of junk mail rested on the coffee table. Near the pesky paper pyramid, stood a smaller stack of two library books, two monographs memorializing particular experiences of life after chemo...for breast cancer cancer survivors. I glanced at the covers, and read the commentaries on the back cover. I opened the red softcover volume and peeked inside...a list stared back at me, a list of how to celebrate the end of your treatments. Walk on a beach, and contemplate the eternal by staring at the oceanic horizon. Place all of your empty pill vials on your driveway and run them over with your car. Host a gathering, ask your friends to bring tulip bulbs, and plant them as symbol of a hopeful future. The suggestions ranged from exalting the endless, to indulging the whimsical, to a botanic domestication of uncertainty. A few sentences down the page cautioned...it may take several weeks after your last chemo treatment to feel rejuvenated. The caveat is accurate.

Her circadian rhythms are still calibrated by the cytotoxic cocktail delivered almost a week ago. The usual side effects, sensing their imminent eviction, impose themselves upon the biological theater...a festive and most unwelcome curtain call. Nausea...takes a few too many bows and lingers on the stage for the past few days. Irritability and exhaustion...duel each other in an attempt to seize a few rays of the remaining limelight. Her follow-up appointment in a week or two will complete this performance...chemo closure to the tune of an oncologist's applause. No refunds allowed.

While she devoured her new library acquisitions, I dined on a different genre of recitation. Eduardo Galeano's Walking Words (1995) served up a satisfying safe harbor of fiction. Thumbing through the dog-eared pages, I reacquainted myself with traces I had left behind. One of my favorites recounts how a man "...searches in vain for the word that slipped away as he was about to say it. It was right on the tip of his tongue. Where did it go?" Galeano sews up the playful prose with a few questions. "Is there a place for all the words that don't want to stay? A kingdom of lost words? These words that escape, were do they lie in wait?"

I dissolve myself in different riddles and dwell on the currency of chemotherapy-induced irritability...a coinage minted from toxins and stamped with abrading phrases. Fortunately, this legal (un)tender speech lost much of its value with repetition...a devaluation of meaning...hyperinflation of a different sort. What will I do with all this worthless wordage? Is there a space for all the words that shouldn't have been said? What will be my ceremony to mark the transition into this post-chemo era? Walk on the beach and bury my journal in the sand? Place it on the driveway and run it over with the car? Plant it in the garden, and imagine a tree bearing rant-flavored fruit? I abhor the randomness of chemo-induced irritability...its artificiality...its poisonous prose born from the body's reflex to erupt, eradicate and expel the toxic elixir. Irritability infused by cytotoxins is indecipherable. Is there a ritual space for all the events that needn't be exalted? An ethnography of lost rituals? These rituals that abate, where do they lie inchoate?

The Great Chemo Escape...infusion number iv

A few years ago, Daniela introduced me to a new comic book superhero. She handed me a copy of Michael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000). "You'll like it," she endorsed. I liked the novel. And, I liked the comic books and comic book anthologies, The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist that followed the novel. The Escapist, in summary, is a master of locks, chains, ropes, knots, ties, fastenings, and fetters of all kinds. He champions the League of the Golden Key--a secret and ancient society dedicated to the principles of liberation and freedom, from oppression and slavery, physical or psychological. Following the Manichean motifs of many comic book story lines, the Escapist is constantly battling the agents of the Iron Chain, a mysterious criminal network machinating and plotting to limit freedom and curtail liberty throughout the globe. But I warn you, don't dismiss the Escapist's escapades. The comic books are replete with nuance, and self-effacingly blur the boundaries between the idealized constructions of both freedom and bondage.

Since the Escapist managed to extricate himself from Chabon's novel, and resides in a new series of comic book anthologies, I thought he may just be able to decamp once more and redeploy his skills in the Chemoscape. We were both astounded as he leapt from the page and became our accomplice in the great chemo escape.

In order to retreat into this recital of rescue and release, dissolve yourself in the slideshow. Or, if your disappearance requires a larger stage, click here, to slip into the super-sized spiel.

fiori di fuori...e gocce dell'acqua

Today it rained for most of the afternoon, an even-tempered shower...the kind you can comfortably walk in, but not for too long. I returned home and noticed that the two cherry blossom trees in our front yard had started to flower. The rain was relenting a bit and had resigned itself to intermittent sprinkles. I decided to take a closer look at the droplets deposited on the cherry blossoms.

A day and a half away, another rain awaits...a more toxic and temperamental drip...IV number IV...mimetic finality. Today's water droplets also held an intoxicating quality. However, theirs was more poetic, less poisonous. Swarming around and upon the fragile flowers these rain drops had managed to hold other reflections hostage.

Here are the images in movie format. (If your glances need to be more absorbing...click here to view the images in an enlarged slideshow format with captions.)

Chemoddity Fetishism...

Chemoddity Fetishism: 1) The state wherein social relations are transformed into apparently objective relationships between medical treatments and metastasis; 2) An illusion arising from the central role that privatized medicine plays in the convalescing social process; 3) an irrational idolization or visceral veneration...of chemotherapy treatments. (Sentence Usage: The remedial nature of medical treatments is complicated by the abstraction of chemoddities, or chemoddity fetishism.)

Before falling asleep last night, I was waxing enthusiasm over the final infusion only a few days away. In my conversation with Daniela, I anticipated an eagerness for closure, but instead was confounded by her comments. Her words tempered my eagerness. "After this last treatment, I'm going to have a crisis of faith," she disclosed. "...faith in what?" I pried. Her response amazed me: "Faith in chemotherapy... right now, I know that there is something working to stop cancer. After chemotherapy...what happens? We just wait." Her comments revealed a re-imagined chemotherapy. Her concerns transformed the treatment of toxic infusions into more abstract constructions, chemotherapy as...protector, insurance, safeguard, oasis, haven, refuge, sanctuary and shelter. (Pale shelter, literally.) Instead of an escape from chemotherapy, she wanted to escape into it. Avant-garde images began to drip from my imagination...the plastic bag of curative toxins syphoning her upwards through the translucent tubing, a corrupted version of the genie in a bottle...self-exiled into the toxic elixir...the comforts of amniotic fluid replaced by the praetorian potions of Taxotere and Cytoxan...a disturbing notion of insulating toxicity.

Daniela's anxiety about the future had crafted a reality part magical realism, part medical realism...an idealized remission nurtured by the intersection of infinity and chemotherapy. Some philosophers and social scientists have qualified reality as a social construction. Daniela had re-qualified it as a septic construction. As I meditated, I did not question her comments...the incarcerated characterization of herself within this constructed reality. I looked at her and smiled. I kissed her goodnight and asked myself a simple question.... How do I plan her escape?

Spiral Spells

Chemotherapy is fertile terrain for mood spirals. And, spirals have an irresistible seductive savor. I need to believe that there is a symmetry, an equation of aesthetics, that shapes or sculpts what sometimes appear to be random logarithms of irritation, exhaustion, introspection, anxiety, and apprehension. Contemplating this intersection of geometry and emotion provides a refuge from the arbitrariness.
The past six days have been sprinkled with spiraling sequences. Spiraling upwards or downwards, these motions of particular mind-sets have choreographed many enchanting moments. For instance, I will think twice before assessing my ability to stack a dishwasher as anything other than inadequate. Or, I will never underestimate the effects of Gabriela's contact lens, which decided to run away one day while she played in the park, for such a mishap had the ability to summon a spectral Shakespearean sermon. Plotting such moments, in a grid lined with hindsight, sketches many a smile. I smile, even when the verbalized frustration spirals around me. One more infusion awaits. I smile knowing that the chemotherapy spell will soon be broken.

In the meantime, I capture other species of spiral...ones that frame empty spaces...bursting with absence...shrouded in silence. Here is one I found today while looking up, in a federal government building, of all places.

Awedly Penned vs. Oddly Pinned

Admiration is both the title and the first word in an essay that Gabriela recently wrote in school. During a scheduled and routine conference today, Gabriela's teacher shared with us this unexpected expression of wonderment. Here is the essay:


Ari's preferred mode of narration is a bit more abstract. He often sits at the computer and crafts short poems, and once in a while he engages in mesmerizing displays of performance art. A few evenings ago, while tidying up the kitchen, I turned around and found myself face to face with a provocative portrayal...a curious chronicle of Ari's relationship with Daniela. He too was providing support, literally and in his own way. Upper incisors anchored in the retral portion of the styrofoam neck...lower incisors delicately balancing the bottom of the bust, he just stood there. I asked him to hold the pose, and quickly woke the camera napping on the dinning room table. Here is the exposition:

Cámara Lúcida...Haikus

Aporetic glance.
Camera rolls and barters,
Auras Blue and Red.


At rest, fatigue fades.
Political fevers rise;
Illumination.

[punctum]